Need to go beyond GST, create new tax structure: Dr Chandra

Applauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the states for bringing the historic GST Bill to the cusp of implementation, Rajya Sabha MP Dr Subhash Chandra on Thursday asked the government to think beyond GST and start a new taxation system instead of just replicating existing global models.

“Due to lack of Ease of Doing Business in our country there is lot of indirect tax, which is because of corruption, we should also address it… In the time to come, we should go beyond GST and think out of the box to bring about a new taxation structure…. Why should we copy others? Why should we not build a tax structure that will be unique, one that will benefit both the taxpayer and revenue,” Dr Chandra said to applause from all quarters.

In his maiden speech in the Upper House, Dr Chandra, an Independent Member from Haryana, called upon the government to further reduce the tax structure to motivate people to pay taxes, and which would help do away with penal provisions under which the government is compelled to arrest people.

He also thanked the opposition benches for acknowledging, albeit grudgingly, that GST is a unique experiment done by the GST Council.

Tracing the Indian economy’s journey, Dr Chandra pointed out that India’s  contribution to the world GDP had plummeted from 32 per cent two millennia ago to a mere 4.2 per cent in 1950, shortly after the British left.  

Questioning India’s economic growth during 70 years of independence, Dr Chandra said “If we compare these statistics with the growth in India’s population then we see that since 1950 our growth has been negative.”

Quoting data from Angus Maddison studies to back his argument, Dr Chandra said “The manufacturing growth that was 1.7 per cent in 1950 went up to 2.3 per cent in 1980 and reached 4 per cent in 2015. Our share in the global that was 1.3 per cent, in 1950 went down to 0.5 per cent in 1980 and has now come back to only 1.7 per cent.”  

He also pointed to the skewed distribution of Indian wealth, noting that 1 per cent of the people owned 58 per cent of the $2.23 trillion that India earned from 2000 to 2015, 9 per cent had 23 per cent, and 90 per cent got only 19 per cent.

“This clearly shows that poor became poorer and rich became richer,” he said, adding that he hoped GST would prove to be a great measure to eradicate poverty.

At the same time, he said, this was just the first step and India needed to do a lot more.

He also reminded the Congress of Indira Gandhi’s 20-point programme, saying that “it was also a phenomenon as great as GST but the system failed her and also the revolutionary step.”