Why do we pay taxes in this country ?

That the Government is abdicating its responsibilities and passing off its duties to private individuals is old news. This is done in a manner and the path chosen is such that the individual feels he has no option but to obey if he has to exist and subsist in India. Private individuals and entrepreneurs who follow the law pay all their taxes due are vulnerable because their life's earnings and assets are all at stake because of laws which strangulate them.

It takes decades to set up a school , an industry or a nursing home specially if you are not a corporate fraud where you can take tens of thousands of crores in loans from Public Sector Banks because of your political affiliations and not pay back a single rupee. The small entrepreneur does not have such luxuries nor does he get benefit of any subsidy on land which he buys at market rate. He does not get any help or rebate in income and other taxes in his initial years of business. Usually all that a small entrepreneur has is invested in his business on top of which he still has some loans.

The Government then brings him into the license Raj either through Environment, or labour issues or cultural issues or claims that he needs to be regulated because he is dealing with public health and lives of people are at stake because of substandard establishments. A question which bears asking is honorable Ministers and parliamentarians and legislators sirs, why should an average citizen not have standardized medical care, education, employment and housing easily accessible to him from his elected Government. Why should he need to approach so called substandard education factories, cruel industrial employers and so called unethical doctors for getting what is his fundamental right. This right to food, housing, employment, education and health of a citizen are against the State and it the state which should be held responsible for failing in its duties. Very cleverly this responsibility under Right to Education Act, Labor laws, Biomedical waste , PCPNDT, Employee State Insurance, Provident Fund and Clinical Establishment Acts has been deflected on to private individuals and they are kept under check by various licensing and registrations required under these. Any fault in a citizen's accessibility to his fundamental rights is then deflected promptly to these providers.

I pay my taxes for the Government in hope that it does its duties. If the Government wishes me to do its duties then I need to be paid for the same. A recent order ; nay dictat issued by Chandigarh Administration has asked all private hospitals to compulsorily purchase a machine to make Aadhaar card from its approved vendor and make aadhaar cards of all babies born in their hospital. The veiled threat is that the registration of nursing homes under Clinical Establishment Act is at stake. This is fraught with dangers of what is to come next. Small nursing homes in Chandigarh today conduct about 10 deliveries per month. It is not financially viable to hire an operator for such a machine and have him available 24 hrs whenever a delivery occurs. That the Government approved vendors machine will remain fault free and whether repair team will be available 24 hrs are all issues which are glossed over while issuing the dictat. What is the penalty if some baby born because of whatever reason could not have his aadhaar card made maybe because the baby was shifted to a Neonatal ICU immediately after delivery because his condition was sick.

Problems start the moment we accept that the XYZ official has the power to regulate specially when he is not qualified to do the regulation. Some bureaucrat sitting somewhere has thought of this brilliant plan which after 6 months of confusion will be quietly consigned to the dustbin. Meanwhile the manafacturers of these aadhaar machines will be laughing their way to the bank for having sold useless machines to people who had no use of them in the first place. Of course they would not be the only ones laughing as they would have shared their loot with those who issued these orders in the first place.

Dr Neeraj Nagpal 
Convenor,Medicos Legal Action Group, Managing Director MLAG Indemnity, 
Ex President IMA Chandigarh 
09316517176 
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