Friday, February 26, 2010
Banerjee upset on fuel tax
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee is among the MPs who are upset with Pranab Mukherjee's Union Budget. The reason for Mamata being upset is that the Railways will no longer be exempted from service tax for transportation of goods, which means her please all Budget may not go according to plan. Trinamool has now decided to join hands with the Opposition against the increase in petroleum prices.
IMO: As with so many things in India, it all seems a pity. If Banerjee had been allowed exemption, this could have avoided further green taxes, as rail, normally, is an energy saving means of transport. Not so for road travel, the roads are crap, always being maintained and broken again and not at all green, or even, it seems, trying to be. We continually see things like this going wrong in India's probably basically very sound economy. Congress probably still seems better than BJP when something goes wrong, but not better enough. As for Banerjee's railway budget, my first thought was to think of the old comic tune, "Springtime for Hitler in Germany, Winter for Poland and France" along the line "Springtime for Didi in West Bengal, Winter for Mumbai and Goa" but West Bengal certainly does need rail improvements and I recall the years of protests even over the North extension to the suburban Tollygunge line. My main worry over the budget would have been, I think, an apparent reduction in overall expenditure on maintainance, probably hardly Didi's fault and a big plus point could have been the promise of some more track. Whether efforts on public/private expansion, probably to be expected of a strong centrist party, will be well done certainly raises questions after Tony Blair's failed centrist efforts but hopefully Banerjee will do the job a lot better than Blair, or wind the program down a bit. Time will tell, but perhaps its all politics. I do not like politics, but then neither did Joe Stalin.
IMO: As with so many things in India, it all seems a pity. If Banerjee had been allowed exemption, this could have avoided further green taxes, as rail, normally, is an energy saving means of transport. Not so for road travel, the roads are crap, always being maintained and broken again and not at all green, or even, it seems, trying to be. We continually see things like this going wrong in India's probably basically very sound economy. Congress probably still seems better than BJP when something goes wrong, but not better enough. As for Banerjee's railway budget, my first thought was to think of the old comic tune, "Springtime for Hitler in Germany, Winter for Poland and France" along the line "Springtime for Didi in West Bengal, Winter for Mumbai and Goa" but West Bengal certainly does need rail improvements and I recall the years of protests even over the North extension to the suburban Tollygunge line. My main worry over the budget would have been, I think, an apparent reduction in overall expenditure on maintainance, probably hardly Didi's fault and a big plus point could have been the promise of some more track. Whether efforts on public/private expansion, probably to be expected of a strong centrist party, will be well done certainly raises questions after Tony Blair's failed centrist efforts but hopefully Banerjee will do the job a lot better than Blair, or wind the program down a bit. Time will tell, but perhaps its all politics. I do not like politics, but then neither did Joe Stalin.
# posted by uv : 8:30 PM
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