Swarajya, May 27, 1961
Mr. Hayden, by dint of telling all the world he is a great painter, has made them believe it.
- Thackeray in his Diary
The President of the Madras Hindustan Chamber of Commerce ‘las, according to newspaper reports, out-heroded Herod and proved himself more tax Promoting than the Finance Minister himself. It appears Mr. H. C. Kothari, welcoming the Finance Minister to the annual meeting of his Chamber, referred in the course of his speech to the fact that the proportion of taxation to national income in India was only 9 per cent compared to 28 per cent in U.K., 33 per cent in U.S.A., 27 per cent in Germany, and so on. And Mr. Morarji Desai, taking advantage of Mr. Kothari’s figures thanked him for showing him “a great scope for raising taxation”.
Nothing can be more amusing than this percentage approach, ignoring the human aspect of the inadequacy of what is left over to support normal life when the national income is so low, and is so highly taxed as it is in India compared to the other countries whose taxation percentages are quoted. Taking 1957-58 figures for the countries quoted, here are the per capita national income figures:
India … … Rs. 289
U.K. … … Rs. 4,561
U.S.A. … … Rs. 10,124
Germany … … Rs. 3,530
Take off even 50 per cent from the other figures, we have still round about Rs. 2,300, Rs. 5,000, and Rs. 1,800. But any experiment of that sort on Rs. 289 would leave a calamitous result. Reduce the courses in a Raj Bhavan dinner by half, the guests can still be content. But reduce Oliver Twist’s ration by a little, and you will starve him to death. There is nothing so fallacious as percentage fairness when we are dealing with vastly unequal quantities. Mathematics is good when it is fully understood, dangerous when knowledge is in
