Unless we raise our voices for things that matter, our taxes will keep failing us
There is a lot of anger among the middle class with the recent budget, and social media is awash with memes expressing the middle-class frustration. It might come as a shock for the chattering class who kept spreading the hate narratives and hero-worshipped many politicians in recent times to know that no one cares for them. You are just cheap fodder in the grand scheme of things.
Look around and you see that one or two business families have monopolised most of the infrastructure of the country. When you pay through your nose to have a stale coffee in a glitzy but leaky airport, look whose name adorns most of the airports that were build with your tax money. You pay advance road tax for 15 years, pay nearly half the cost of the vehicle as vehicle tax and registration fee, pay nearly 45 per cent as tax on fuel and cess on that tax... all these are collected so that the government can supposedly build good roads for you. Where are those good roads? If in some stretches there are patches of good roads, at least in non-monsoon months, you have to pay exorbitant toll tax to private players for the privilege of driving through those public roads.
If a government that fails to provide basic services such as safety, clean water, and reliable power, citizens must pay for private alternatives and which is what you do, using your post tax money to provide for the same. Education is costly and jobs are scarce due to competition and corruption. Polluting industries are left unchecked, forcing citizens in polluted cities to spend on air filters and medical treatment. Government hospitals and public spaces are neglected. The government collects taxes but fails to fulfill any of its promises.
After paying tax for anything and everything, what do you get in return? This filthy air, these crumbling roads, these leaking airports, falling bridges? So the pattern is, first you pay tax believing the government will provide you with roads, hospitals, power, infrastructure, schools, law and order and when they fail spectacularly, you use your post tax money to arrange all these for yourself from private parties. And what does the government do? They once again collect tax for these too, rewarding themselves for their failure. Is it any wonder that whoever can afford are fleeing this country?
Everyone knows this anger against the budget will die down in a few weeks. Any government worth its salt knows that the middle class doesn’t matter for keeping them in power. The majority of the country is deliberately kept poor and illiterate by the politicians so that all they have to do is to create a communal narrative, spread hatred and reap the votes. Add a few freebies like ration and some token homes and the desperate poor can be kept from revolting.
As far as the middle class is concerned, all that is to be done is to invoke patriotism, divide the society in the name of religion and the people, like us, the chattering, loyal, moronic middle class will wag our tails and keep voting despite all failures. When we sometimes whimper our helplessness about this whipping, like how it is happening now, they will throw a distraction and say ‘fetch’ and we will run after that, yelping, eager to please the master.
This distraction can come in many forms. It may come as a ‘neo Thuglaqan’ rule like forcing the neighbourhood fruit vendor who ekes out of a few hundred rupees a week to feed his starving family to write his name on his rickety cart so that he can be discriminated against for his religion and caste. Lo and behold, says this narrative, your enemy is that one old man selling brinjals and onions at the street corner. It may come as raging about what some king did or did not do 400 years ago or what some leader failed to do 75 years ago.
They know by keeping on rambling about an imaginary past and a utopian future, but never talking about the present, they can lull your senses. It is easy to make you buy into this colourful narrative about how this India of crumbling flyovers, overflowing drainage, filthy city streets, teeming with poor, illiterate, unhealthy and homeless millions, is fast becoming a world leader and is going to leave the US, China and Europe in dust soon. Your tax is just for that, they will say, to make India a world leader.
How long will we keep buying this fiction? Unless we realise this narrative for what it is and raise our voice for things that matter, for safe cities, air, roads, jobs and such mundane things, all our votes and all our taxes will only help one or two monopolistic tycoons to become more and more rich. If that is fine with us, we can always go on with our struggles and distract our mind from the harsh every day realities by watching billion-dollar wedding obscenities.
Anand Neelakantan
Author of Asura, Ajaya series, Vanara and Bahubali trilogy
mail@asura.co.in