Open Letter to Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India

Open Letter to Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India

Shri  Subramanian, Krishnamurthy

Respected Sir,

It is a new challenge I am throwing at you and in fact to all Economists of world. It is not in your job profile as a Chief Economic Advisor so I call it a new challenge.

Only the day before I was conversing with my Doctor and the pain I found in her reflects the pain of every being – rich and poor, owner or an employee, even a Govt officer, all alike. Her agony was that after putting in hard labor day to night she gets some meager amount as performance incentive but GST is deducted from that amount too and that is in addition to Income tax she pays and tax on everything that she buys. You and I too are paying all kinds of taxes but being accustomed of it and accepting it as a part of life we do not feel the pain. But believe me as a human being even the richest person feels the pain when he has to part with his hard earned money by way of taxes.

I have been working on this concept for last several years (in fact from UPA2 days when huge scams were coming out every other day) and now I am convinced I have a solution to it. My research says that our country owns numerous kinds of Natural Resources and concrete and financial assets built since the start of civilization and being built every day. The cumulative value of these assets and resources is humongous but it remains unknown.

Central and State Governments share among themselves various kinds of these Natural Resources and Concrete and Financial assets  BUT THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT KNOW THE IMMENSE VALUE OF THESE ASSETS WHICH IS IN TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS. (Imagine the value of 32.86 lakh sq km of land, or 7 lakh sq km forests, a renewable asset, or the largest network of railways, or the largest network of highways and so on).

My conviction is that -

1.     The Governments should have been earning revenue by producing Goods and Services from these Resources and Assets for welfare of their people directly or by leasing them to private sector. But Governments have taken the easy course of extracting Taxes from their hapless subjects as per the practice from ages.  Government is earning a miniscule (10%) income from the humongous amount of resources at its disposal, – 3 lakh crores in 2019-20 as per budget estimate, rest 90% comes from various kind of taxes and borrowing.

2.    I have found a Methodology to evaluate all natural resources and concrete and financial assets.  This methodology shall facilitate evaluation of all assets and resources of each and every village, town, city and metro of the country (6.58 lakh Geographical Entities as per 2011 census), both in public and private domain.  By consolidating value of these Entities we can compute value of assets that every Ministry owns and controls. It shall facilitate knowing Net Worth of the Nation by enlisting all Assets and Liabilities of the nation in the form of a Balance Sheet.  Balance Sheet is the basic guide for every commercial enterprise but Governments do not make it or have not been able to make it though several attempts have been made by many countries in the past.

3.    Once value of resources at the disposal of Ministries is known then the second logical step would be to ask the Ministers and learned bureaucrats of each Ministry and State to Redesign their work plan in a manner that they start generating commensurate revenue from the resources at their disposal just as in private sector. In case of need of new ideas, CEOs from private sector can be appointed through competition between various aspirants and appointing the ones who give most practical and most paying earning plan. Fundamental difference between a CEO and a Government Minister is that while the former is an EARNER the later is a SPENDER. The CEO is obliged to give commensurate return to his employer from the resources provided to him. The Minister has no obligation to earn; he simply gets money from budget to spend.

4.    Once the Ministries start earning from resources at their disposal pressure on budget shall start reducing and a day shall come when their earnings shall be optimized and they shall start contributing to the exchequer.

5.    I have started writing Open letters to our Ministers and putting them on my blogs for public participation. I am pointing out to the Ministers the huge stock of assets they possess and exhorting them to earn revenue from these assets to meet their revenue expenses in the first instance - A transformation from SPENDERS to EARNERS.

6.    With the increase in revenue from assets pressure on taxes and borrowing shall start reducing. And a day shall come when there shall be no need of tax revenue and borrowing. In fact country shall transform in to a Lender from being a Borrower.

7.    Result a Tax free society – biggest gift to humanity.

Sir, one pays happily for the goods and services one is buying but it is very painful to part with your hard earned income in taxes.  So the challenge before all Economists is to relieve people from this pain of paying taxes. You know more than me the kinds of natural resources and concrete and financial assets of enormous value are at the disposal of various Ministries (I have tried to list them at my blog site mynotestopmofindia.blogspot.com).  My submission is why Government cannot earn optimum revenue from these resources and start reducing tax burden eliminating them altogether one day.

I have made it a Mission of my life to make it possible – Tax Free Regime. Can you please lend me a helping hand in this Nobel cause? Just giving a thought about this possibility shall also be a valuable contribution, sir.

M.K. Agarwal