Editorial: Taxing times for all Indians

The Centre taxes the states, the states tax citizens, and citizens tax…?

The cup of woes of the Indian citizenry is overflowing with the BJP-led NDA government loading them with a fuel price hike almost every day. Petrol prices which had hovered around the Rs 100 mark, have now spiralled to over Rs 111 per litre and no different is the case of diesel, LPG or CNG.

One does not have to be a financial wizard to guess that every paisa added to fuel price triggers a cascading effect on the prices of almost every commodity from rice to rocket components. That the BJP led government cunningly kept fuel prices on hold till the Assembly polls in five states were over in March and then resorted to a spree of hikes, shows how manipulative the political class has become.

The latest battle of words between the BJP led Central government and the Opposition was triggered by PM Modi’s challenge to states on why they were unable to cut VAT on petrol and diesel and pass on the benefit to consumers. With Assembly polls looming in several states next year and the BJP perpetually on the defensive against the fusillade launched by opposition parties, Modi was obviously trying to shift the blame for bunglings on the policy front and mismanagement of the economy, to the opposition.

Titans of the opposition like MK Stalin of the DMK, Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena, Mamata Banerjee of the TMC and Pinarayi Vijayan of the CPIM), were quick to see through the game plan of the Centre and pounce on it for its attempts to fill its own kitty at the cost of the states. While Uddhav cited the Rs 26,500 crore the Centre owes Maharashtra, Stalin was at his sarcastic best remarking that what the PM was trying to do by not revealing the facts was ‘conceal a pumpkin in a handful of rice.’

According to him, while excise duty levied on fuel has to be shared with states, that share has been reduced, thus affecting states’ revenue. The cess and surcharge on fuel which are not meant to be shared with state governments, have been exorbitantly hiked, burdening people and the union government is enjoying the revenue earned from this, he commented.

No less critical was Vijayan who disclosed that since 2014, the Central government has increased taxes on petroleum products 14 times and reduced it four times, but the southern State has never hiked taxes on fuel.

So where does the truth or the untruths lie? Are we being taken for a ride and forced to pay the last paisa in our pockets while helplessly watching this never ending blame game? Covid has left most people struggling to make both ends meet and now our governments have turned heartless and are trying to befool the citizenry with mindboggling statistics about prices and apportioning of taxes.

It’s time the PM called a meeting on fuel prices to trash out differences with the opposition and made sure the prices dropped so that the looming inflationary trends do not destroy any semblance of normalcy remaining in ordinary people’s lives.