Political: Dividends of and dangers to Democracy

Democracy, when we hear the word unfortunately we have some bad memories attached with it. We now believe democracy is bad governance, democracy is corruption and democracy is everything worst that we haven’t seen in the military rule while according to the definition democracy is ‘a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy).’People for decades have argued for and against it but one quote says it all.

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 11, 1947

I recently had an opportunity to hear what our leadership has to say on the topic and it was unexpected for me that none of them kept themselves on topic and talking a lot about non issues. I left the venue with very confusing set of mind and this confusion led me to do my own research on democracy. We should agree on the definition of democracy I explained earlier and according to the definition what people expect from democracy is good governance but we should also agree that expectations from democracy if undelivered by the democracy could be the dangers to democracy.

See this, if a democratic government fails to deliver good governance and its regime helping corruption to grow that is the major danger to the democracy, this will make a perception of democracy in people’s mind and this perception will lead people not to choose democracy anymore.

Now, the question arises why democratic government failed to deliver, making people believe that at least a democratic government cannot solve their problems and the answer is attitudes of masses and their leaders. On the whole it may well be concluded that our attitudes are not democratic at all aggression and intolerance are the major reasons why could not build a democratic system in past 63 years. 

Think carefully and act accordingly ... 

Political: Oops what Wikileaks has done

When I tuned in my television set this morning there were some shocking headlines displaying in the 'Breaking News' bar and those were sacred american information published by wikileaks. Though, there were some news for last one year regarding publishing sacred american information but today they done it and you know what pentagon did they say we condemn it. 

According to NY Times, About 11,000 of the cables are marked “secret.” An additional 9,000 or so carry the label “noforn,” meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries, and 4,000 are marked “secret/noforn.” The rest are either marked with the less restrictive label “confidential” or are unclassified. Most were not intended for public view, at least in the near term. The documents — some 250,000 individual cables, the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 American diplomatic outposts around the world — were made available to The Times by a source who insisted on anonymity. They were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets, allegedly from a disenchanted, low-level Army intelligence analyst who exploited a security loophole. Beginning Sunday, WikiLeaks intends to publish this archive on its Web site in stages, with each batch of documents related to a particular country or topic. Except for the timing of publication, the material was provided without conditions. Each news organization decided independently what to write about the cables.

Currently Wikileaks is under cyber attack and readers can read the cables from NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/28/world/20101128-cables-viewer.html#report/cables-09TRIPOLI771

Economic: The much awaited RGST and masses

The local media generated enough hype among masses regarding reformed general sales tax (RGST) though still some of them are unclear about what impacts could this RGST have on their lives. Well, from the government's point of view its obviously an earner but do masses agree to this obviously 'NOT' as they think there are many other ways to generate or save income and what the funniest thing is, they are showing resilience without even knowing what this is all about. 


So, do RGST will have an impact on public? well the government officials keep saying that it will not affect the public as the rates are being reduced through this new legislation but none of them have told the public that they are increasing the items in the GST basket. So, you might be paying lesser GST on one of the product you purchased last month but you might also be paying GST on products which were exempted under previous legislations. In particular the proposed system will:

(i) reduce standard sales tax rate to 15% and increase exemption threshold to Rs 7.5 million;

(ii) curtail exemptions mostly basic food items, charities and international/sovereign commitments;

(iii) provide no general zero-rating facility to local consumption;

(iv) promote documentation of the national economy and broaden the base of consumption/expenditure taxation in the country;

(v) modernize the value added tax system of the country by adopting international best concepts and practices of indirect taxation;

(vi) facilitate the cash flow of businesses through centralized/electronic expeditious refund payment system; and

(vii) provide for appropriate provisions to collect and administer Provincial sales tax on services in integrated manner along with Federal sales tax as and when authorized by the provinces. 


Though, it appears that this will bring advancements to our tax system but the point is, do we really need all this at stage when, GDP of the country is at the lowest in the region, indirect i.e. consumer taxes are almost double of direct taxes, Interest rates are at all time high and above all a rising inflation trend for last couple of years. 


Think carefully and act accordingly ...