A rap president will be definitely better than a crap president.

At an award ceremony Mr Kanye West announced that he will be running for president in 2020. Who he? He is a rapper, song writer and record producer and very, very rich, at around $90 million. He is married to Kim Kardashian who is famous for her big bottom. She is reportedly worth $85 million. She has made all that money without any real talent, other than somehow being photographed, which makes her a genius." It's not about me. It's about ideas. New ideas. People with ideas. People who believe in truth," said Mr West. We have to wait to see if he is serious because he also said," Yes, I rolled up a little something. I knocked the edge off." Marijuana has been legalized in some states of the US so by 2020 it will probably be available everywhere. A State of the Union speech in rap will certainly be more entertaining than at present. However, he will not have the advantage of being the first black to run for president. The present incumbent, Barack Obama had that advantage. He won because 95% of blacks voted for him in 2008 and 93% of blacks voted for him in 2012 with a higher voter turnout. Mr Obama had a white mother, was brought up by white grandparents in Hawaii and converted to Christianity (his father was a Muslim from Kenya), which makes him a whitewashed black. Whites, especially the young, could be politically correct by voting for him. He is a super gasbag, very good at making grand speeches, without taking any responsibility. Women make up 50.8% of the population of the US and yet, with all the talk about feminism, not one woman has been a candidate for presidential election in the US. Two have been running mates for men and lost both times. Hillary Clinton lost in the primaries to Obama in 2008 and then made the fatal mistake of working as Secretary of State during Obama's first term. Since then she has been hounded by the Republicans about the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September, 2012. Obama has maintained a craven silence about the incident and the attempted cover up. Now she is being investigated by the FBI for using a private server for emails during her term as Secretary of State. There is not need for political correctness in her case. She is white, was a successful lawyer, a former first lady and is seen as the ultimate insider. Her husband, Bill Clinton delivered a rollicking speech at the Democratic convention in 2012 which helped Obama to win a second term but Obama will do nothing to help Hillary. There is a good chance that Hillary Clinton will have to drop out. After Obama even Donald Trump will be an improvement. So why not Mr West as president and Kim Kardashian as first lady. At least the White House reporters will enjoy.

What is worse, agriculture or bombing?

We have written many times that human beings are the worst predators and have even compared humans to the malaria parasite, which invades a body, multiplies relentlessly by evading the immune system, develops resistance to drugs and finally causes fever, which is global warming for mother earth. Research by a professor in Canada shows that humans are indeed 'wickedly efficient super predators ', being responsible for the extinction of 322 species in the last 500 years, the majority in the last 2 decades. We hunt fish 14 times more aggressively than sharks or killer whales. While other carnivores hunt the young and the sick humans hunt adult animals and thus destroy breeding populations. The hunting of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe by a dentist from the US is an example. He was head of his pride and his death resulted in the killing of one of his cubs. But killing animals for food or pleasure may not be the greatest killer. It is agriculture. We grow food to eat, which requires vast tracts of land. So people resort to slash and burn technique to clear large areas of forest every year, not only killing all the species living in the forest, but also destroying habitat. But that is not enough. Unlike animals, we have to cook our food to be able to digest what we eat which requires more land to produce cooking oil, so more forests are cut down. Being top of the food chain the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest does not apply to us so our numbers keep multiplying, requiring more food, in a relentless cycle of destruction. There is research and debate about our effect on other animals but no one talks about the real reason, which is unrestrained population growth, because it is politically incorrect. Perhaps, the only reason that some other animals still survive is because, being killers, we kill each other with even more ferocity. For instance, a 3 year old boy was murdered by the mafia in Italy because his grandfather could not repay a loan while a teenage girl was shot by a homeowner in the US, who recorded her dying gasps. The former head of the British army holds the Prime Minister, David Cameron responsible for the chaos in Libya. He tried to prove his manhood by killing Gaddafi, resulting in the death of 30,000 Libyans. That he did not learn from the violence in Iraq due to the removal of Saddam Hussein shows that either he is as big a moron as George Bush is or that he likes killing, or both. The US is of course a leader in slaughter. First bomb Iraq to kill Saddam, which gives rise to Al Qaeda, so bomb Al Qaeda, to create ISIS and now bombing ISIS to kill more civilians. Or use drones for so called ' targeted killings ' and dismiss the death of children as ' collateral damage '. All that bombing has resulted in a mass of migration from Libya and Syria into Europe. Soon they maybe forced to bomb Berlin and London. 

How can we fly without horse sense?

Seems that the Prime Minister is concerned about very high fares charged by airlines during peak travel hours, especially if someone has to travel at short notice, like in an emergency. Indian politicians and civil servants think of themselves as masters so they like to use force at every opportunity. They would like to force airlines to charge less but cannot. Why? We are not told but it maybe because the government charges double for tatkal passports and high fares, with no refund on cancellation, on railways for tatkal tickets. If it is alright for the government to screw Indians then surely it applies to businesses as well. But here is where it becomes a farce: the same government is contemplating a tax surcharge, called a 'cess', of 2% on airfares to subsidise low cost travel to remote areas. That will add another 2% to the already expensive tickets. Across India at least 50 airports are lying unused because of a lack of passengers. Not just in towns but the so called international airport in Kolkata, a teeming city of 14 million people, looks half empty. The International Air Transport Association recommends lower taxes on tickets, lower taxes on fuel and lower airport charges because, for business to flourish, people must be able to reach their destinations quickly. Will that happen? No chance. The government is keen to pass the Goods and Services Tax bill which will unify taxes across India, creating a common market but Service Tax maybe increased to 18%, which is considered to be 'revenue neutral'. It has already been increased from 12.5% to 14%. Oil prices have fallen by over 50% but airlines are still levying a fuel surcharge. From 2007-2015 airlines have lost Rs 730 billion and have a combined debt of Rs 750 billion so they would like to clean up their balance sheets. We do not know if they have a tax advantage in reducing base fares but not the fuel surcharge. Of the top 5 airlines offering international flights to and from India 3 are from the middle east. Jet Airways tops the list only because it is able to use the Etihad hub in Abu Dhabi while Air India came in at a lowly number 4. These airlines will have the advantage of cheap fuel and lower taxes in the middle east. Why do our politicians and civil servants not understand this most elementary fact? Because they get to fly free on taxpayer money, with a 'companion'. Politicians are hungry to raise taxes to fund all the social schemes for the poor and they need the poor to be bribed with social schemes, to win elections. The obvious answer is to make us rich. Only 3% of Indians are middle class while 76.9% are in the low income group. Reducing taxes will lower costs so that we can afford to buy more. Which means we will be richer even if our earnings stay the same. If Indians cannot afford to eat out on the ground how can they think of flying? A crocodile can never have horse sense, can it?

The mysteries of India.

She has to be the Cleopatra of modern India who could charm men at will so that years after a bitter divorce a former husband helped her to murder her daughter who may also have been her sister. The amazing thing is that, from her newspaper photos, Indrani Mukerjea is no beauty worth dying for, let alone worth killing for. Yet she has a share in a Rs 8 billion fortune with her present husband. She must have thought that she had got away with it as she apparently got away with siphoning large sums of money from INX Media, a company she founded with her latest husband, Peter. Why they returned from England, which is a safe haven for an assortment of the worst criminals of the world, is a mystery. Will this be the 'rarest of the rare' case where the murder is proved in a court of law and the guilty sent to prison before most actors die of old age? We shall see. Another mystery is how little we know about the woman who ruled India for 10 years from 2004 to 2014, which resulted in a near collapse of the economy, a destruction of education and a loss of an entire generation from the employment market. Some believe that Ms Sonia Gandhi is worth $6 billion and the reason why she refused to be prime minister was because a prime minister never travels alone so it is difficult to transport riches. Even her visits to the US for apparent surgery are top secret like in North Korea where Kim Jong-Il's death was kept a secret for 51 hours. Her son, Rahul is the Vice President of the Congress and is expected to wear the crown should he be able to lead the party to victory at the next election. He is supposed to have studied in England, which harbors some of the worst rogues of the world, and apparently worked at the Monitor Group which went bankrupt and was taken over by Deloitte. Mr Rahul established Backops Services Private Limited but it is not clear whether it has ever done any business. At present it is located at a Delhi address and has 2 directors, one Manoj Muttu and Ms Priyanka Gandhi, sister of Rahul. Never heard of Mr Muttu? Neither have we. He is apparently a distant relative of the Gandhis and is very media shy. Apart from Backops he manages, not shyly we hope, several trusts belonging to The Family. We do not know how much money is managed by those trusts. Mr Gandhi has claimed to be a Brahmin. We Hindus do not convert so it is not possible for someone to become a Brahmin. His grandfather was Feroz Khan, a Muslim, who apparently changed his name to Gandhi, a Parsi, to marry Ms Indira Nehru. So either he is a Muslim or a Zoroastrian but a Hindu he is not. But if Congress is so secular as it claims to be why proclaim your religion? No wonder India is known as a land of mystery.

If Patels why not Ambanis?

Isn't it a shame that 68 years after independence Hindus are still divided by caste. Violence in Gujarat has resulted in  the death of 9 people, with buses being burnt by mobs, curfew in places and the army being deployed to keep calm. This is because Patels are demanding Other Backward Class status for reservation in higher education and government jobs. The irony is that Patels are relatively wealthy compared to other sections of society, have relatives sending money from abroad and are known as 'Patidars', which means land owners. The agitation for reservation is being led by 22 year old, Hardik Patel, who passed his BCom exam with 49.6% marks and required grace marks to pass certain subjects. Why should an OBC candidate get admission with 44% when a Patel misses out with 90%, he asks. Good question, but it would have more strength if he had passed with 90%. He is promising a 'dabang', meaning violent, agitation unless there is reservation for everybody or an end to reservations. We support that. Gujjars have been promised 5% reservation in government jobs in Rajasthan where Meenas have had a monopoly with Scheduled Tribe status. The Supreme Court denied reservation to Jats. Naturally, there is a deep sense of injustice leading to anger. In Delhi 225 out of 550 seats for MBBS, that is 50%, are in the general category, which means for everyone, while in BDS only 17 out 40 seats, that is 42.5%, are in the general category. To restore calm there is talk of excluding the 'creamy layer', which means those whose annual income is greater than Rs 600,000, from OBC but not from SC or ST. That just further subdivides an already divided people. It is infuriating that our government is following the same divide-and-rule policy of the British instead of uniting us. Having gained power through reservation OBCs are now persecuting dalits in Bihar and the police have been deployed to protect them, leading up to assembly elections in October. The answer is to ban all castes and treat every citizen equally. Will it work? Will all Hindus suddenly embrace each other as brothers? No. It will take time. Already most educated young people in cities do not know or care about caste. That is because they are more bothered about getting good jobs and enjoying a good life. With rising prosperity, good infrastructure and education villages will also be transformed. But there will be extreme opposition to banning caste. Lower castes will object the most because they are gaining from reservations and politicians will instigate them because they win elections by dividing people. Good can never come out of bad policies. It takes guts to get rid of them.

Why can't they see the obvious?

Governments are supposedly run by very intelligent people. Politicians spend years as underlings, learning their trade, top civil servants have been around for decades and there are highly trained experts to advise on matters of policy. Yet every few years we have a financial crisis that no one had foreseen. High oil prices have been blamed for recessions since 1970. But is oil to blame? When countries are in recession central banks cut interest rates and governments increase spending to stimulate growth. Economic growth leads to higher employment, higher wages and higher spending, leading to higher energy use which causes oil prices to rise. That leads to inflation, forcing central banks to increase interest rates which cuts spending on credit and leads to slower growth. Oil prices drop and the cycle starts again. Years of socialist policies led to the crisis of 1991 when we had to pledge 67 tonnes of our gold to the Bank of England to survive. Yet we repeated the same socialist policies of handouts from 2004, resulting in another crisis in 2013, prompting the then RBI Governor to quote from a book,"....in matters of economics and finance, history repeats itself, not because it is an inherent trait of history, but because we don't learn from history and let the repeat happen." Why don't they learn, not just from our history but from the world? In 2012 the Chief Economist was predicting 9% growth and that multi-brand retail will be a game changer. If you see pictures of Walmart stores in the US it is instantly obvious that the stores are huge, occupying tens of thousands of square feet, not one store is multi storied and they have huge free car parks. Where is the land in India to build such stores? Do these people have their eyes closed when they visit the US, with ' companion ', on taxpayer money? Just as our fellows keep repeating the same failed policies so do governments in other countries. Years of spending, based on debt, has resulted in a crisis in China. One man saw it coming in 2009 but others did not.  Why not? For years we have been told that the Chinese government wants to move away from investment led growth to one of consumption. For people to spend they need reassurance for the future so instead of wasting money on building roads to nowhere the government could have spent the same money on a pension plan for everyone and a universal health insurance scheme, like Obamacare. Chinese leaders have spent time in the west but have learnt nothing so they are repeating the same policies which created the problems in the first place. They might devalue the yuan again which will lead to tit-for-tat devaluation and global recession. Britain's construction led growth will come under stress and even the US is getting jitters. If China self-destructs it might start wars for the party to stay in power. We hope that our agencies are concentrating on the north.

Truth and honesty, with Indian characteristics.

We have written many times that laws passed in bad faith, only to win elections, can only harm the nation and its citizens. We, in the middle class, have been reduced to morons who queue up at election time to get our fingers marked with indelible ink, just to replace one set of feudal thugs with another. The rich buy politicians and civil servants to live outside the system while the poor have the numbers to vote for whichever bunch offers the quickest way to financial suicide, with the greatest handouts. The government is thinking of passing a bill to make it compulsory for all maids to be registered with agencies and employers to pay for pensions, healthcare and vacations. The government maybe reacting to our hysterical media which slavishly repeats what the International Labor Organization has said, without researching the truth. The ILO is also against any modification of our labor laws, which have resulted in fragmentation of industry, to stay outside the laws. Small scale companies are inefficient and highly polluting as they cannot afford the latest technologies because they cannot get loans from banks or raise money from the markets by selling shares. Hence, 94% of labor work in the unorganised sector. Any law to register maids will be a disaster because the cost will rise so high that few will be able to afford maids. At the moment, at least in bigger cities, demand for maids is so huge that they can demand high salaries but if they are priced out of the market most will become unemployed. Instead of being free to negotiate their own wages they will be at the mercy of agencies who will charge them high fees in cash, to find work, just as they do for Indians going to work abroad. The agencies charge them so much that they have to borrow to pay, which means that even when their lives are in danger they refuse to return to India, as 64 nurses have done in Yemen. Without work either the maids will be forced to work part time surreptitiously, which will erode their bargaining power, or be forced into prostitution as happened when the famous ' Chandni bars ' were shut down. Most of these women migrate from villages because they have no income there and being illiterate they work as maids, which does not need any training, to feed their children. When you have 75,000 applicants, some with engineering and post graduate degrees, for 30 posts of peons what hope is their for these illiterate women? Why no jobs? Because the Congress passed the Right to Education Act for its ' vote bank ', thus producing a mass of duffers, who cannot be employed. But there is a glimmer of hope as there is a new party of truth and honesty, called the Indian Business Party which is demanding the right to possess black money. After all, if the rulers have it why shouldn't the subjects?

The three little piggies.

Politicians and their pet pundits constantly advise Indians to invest in the stock market. After years of bitter resistance from unions the government has allowed the Employees Provident Fund to invest in stocks. Rising markets, fall in the price of gold and constant repetition enticed individuals to buy into the stock market fiction and invest in equity mutual funds. Indians trust physical assets, such as gold and real estate, over equity because they see stocks as speculation at best and gambling at worst, but the stock market gives very good returns over the longer term. Some say that markets give the best returns. What experts do not understand is that people do not trust the government or the regulators who, they think, are in collusion with business people to con us. That feeling of mistrust will have been exacerbated by the falls in stock prices in the last few days, though the Sensex has ended positive today. The rupee has fallen to Rs 66 to the dollar. We are told that we can dismiss these falls as temporary because our economy is in a ' sweet spot '. Inflation and the current account deficit are low because of very low commodity prices, especially oil. Our interest rate is relatively high, which gives the Reserve Bank huge latitude for softer monetary policy to stimulate demand. Foreign exchange reserves at over $350 billion are sufficient to reduce volatility of the rupee, the RBI said. Banks maybe sitting on bad loans of Rs 3-6 trillion, which means that banks are reluctant to lend, and the total debt of Indian companies are an eye-watering Rs 32 trillion which means huge interest payments. A lot depends on what the Federal Reserve does in the US. The opposition will not allow the government to pass any reform bills because they sense that without reforms the economy will not be able to withstand the global crisis and if growth stays weak they will have a much better chance of coming to power in 2019. The rupee and shares have fallen but real estate is still going strong, prompting RBI Governor to say that prices must fall. Bank lending to real estate is rising but fewer properties are being sold because prices are too high, the government has clamped down on black money and states have increased registration charges to very high levels. Builders have put all their hopes on a substantial cut in interest rate but a low interest rate may cause the rupee to fall further. That will result in higher import costs and a rise in prices. Like the 3 little piggies the Congress built our economy on sand. Only one weapon will work and the government must use every trick to pass the Goods and Services Tax bill. Or else, bye bye.

Our dirty little secret.

Socialists like to help poor people but they do not like to count the number of the poor, so when a socialist newspaper publishes an article about numbers then things must be getting very serious indeed. Apparently, everyday 68,922 people celebrate their 25th birthday in India, which means that 2.1 million turn 25 years old every month, of whom 1.48 million are in rural areas while 0.62 million are in urban areas. By 2025 there will be 690 million under the age of 25, out of a total population of 1.43 billion. Scary. Malthus predicted that if population growth went unchecked then it will outstrip food production resulting in famine, which is nature's way of restoring balance. There are those who refute this view by saying that human beings will find ways of increasing food production as needed. Scientists tell us that genetically modified, or GM, food is the panacea for food scarcity. Is it? 60 million acres of US farmland have been taken over by ' superweeds ' resistant to Monsanto's weedkiller. GM seeds are expensive so farmers take loans to buy seeds and fertilisers. If a crop is destroyed by the weather the farmer has no money to buy more seeds. Alternatively, if there is a bumper harvest prices drop so much that the farmer is unable to pay his creditors. In either case suicide is the way out. Even if GM technology is able to deliver large amounts of cheap food even that has to be paid for and for that people need to have jobs. How is India going to produce 600 million jobs? We are told that if the economy can be made to grow at 8-10% then millions of jobs will be produced, which will increase spending, resulting in increased investments, which will create more jobs in a perpetual cycle of wealth creation. Will it? Turns out that the much touted high growth, during the first term of the Congress from 2004 to 2010, actually lost 5 million jobs. What will the young do if there are no jobs? One solution is to migrate illegally to other countries. But it is not easy to find jobs without skills so they end up sleeping rough. Or there could be riots, as occurred in Egypt, which also has a demographic bulge, where young people wanted jobs so that they could get married. And therein lies the problem. More people having families means even higher numbers of young people looking for jobs, in a never ending cycle. Would education provide a stimulus for job creation by providing a highly trained workforce that companies would exploit? Half of all university graduates in the UK are in menial jobs which require no degrees. Scholars write scholarly papers about the different growth rates of states in India. One such study suggests that sub-nationalism in Kerala was responsible for its higher development over UP. Maybe, but 3 million are working abroad which is supporting its economy. Perhaps Kerala' superior development is because its fertility is half that of UP. Trouble is, poor people mean more social schemes and more NGOs. Our politicians love that.

Do sovereign nations have sovereignty?

Have independent countries lost their sovereignty to international finance? The humiliating deal signed by Greece is an obvious example where the creditors can overrule the Greek parliament and will dictate government policies. Would it not be better for Greece to leave the Euro, bring back the drachma and default on all its debt, so that it can start with a clean slate? Not so easy. That is what Argentina did in 2001 and has been cut off from all international loans since. It reached a deal with 99% of its creditors where loans would be restructured but a two-penny judge in the US has scuppered the deal and Argentina is stuck in a limbo. How much debt does the US have? The US has total debt in excess of $18 trillion whereas little Argentina has a debt of $115 billion. But the US can print as many dollars as it likes, secure in the knowledge that foreign governments and funds will still buy its treasuries, while a fascist judge has virtually taken over Argentina. Reserve Bank Governor, Raghuram Rajan wrote in 2003," Capital controls were meant primarily to prevent a 20-year-old investment banker from moving money across the world to the country providing the highest returns - what government bureaucrats derisively term speculative capital." But isn't that what he did when he first became governor? He increased interest offered to Non Resident Indians which was another way of increased overseas borrowing. But is any government or central bank really in control of its finances, except the US? The rapid growth in emerging markets was due to very low interest rate followed by quantitative easing in the US which led to a flood of dollars into emerging markets. Governments and businesses borrowed merrily but now the boom has turned to bust. Quantitative easing has ceased and interest rate may rise in the US. Markets and currencies are falling across the board. Since nations have no control over their finances emerging nations can never emerge from the shadows. India owes $8.8 billion to Iran. Why? Because the US decided to impose sanctions on Iran just as it has punished Cuba for over 70 years and has imposed sanctions on Russia. We had to buy expensive oil for decades because the US willed it. The US is involved in trade negotiations with 11 trans-pacific countries, called TPP, and with the European Union, called TTIP. One of the contentious demands by the US is Investor-State Dispute Settlement in which a company can sue a government in another court outside its boundary. Which brings us back to the fascist judge who screwed Argentina. The US continues to supply advanced weapons to Pakistan to kill Indians but our politicians and civil servants love going to the US for vacations. Sovereignty is a myth.

Should we be optimistic or alarmed?

The Dow Jones index plunged by 531 points yesterday, the biggest fall since 2011. Investors are worried about the Chinese economy, a steep fall in commodity prices, especially oil, and uncertainty about whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rate in September. Markets hate uncertainty, hence the fall. We have the advantage of ignorance, unlike fund managers and brokers, who study markets 24/7. So, we predict that the Fed will raise interest rate by 25 basis points to keep right wing Republicans off its back, although the leading Republican candidate, Donald Trump is into real estate and may prefer rates to remain at 0.25% for as long as possible. However, the forward guidance by the Fed will promise no more rises till well into next year to calm stock and currency markets. Experts predict that commodity prices will remain suppressed for sometime to come. Rapid global economic growth, fueled by very low interest rates, and supply disruptions due to various wars following 9/11 resulted in a boom in commodity prices. These pressures have now largely receded and the Iran nuclear deal will allow Iran to increase its oil production. No one knows why OPEC is pumping oil while prices keep dropping. It maybe nothing to do with the US or Russia. Saudi Arabia is a bitter enemy of Iran and bringing down oil prices is one way of keeping economic pressure on Iran. What about China? A Chinese thinks that the devaluation of the yuan was a courageous move designed to align the currency with the market rate. China wants the yuan to become a part of the Special Drawing Rights of the IMF so the devaluation was a move in the right direction. Not so, say the critics. Growth in China was due to massive investments, fueled by debts, which are giving less returns so China has to shift its economy to consumption, which will take time. Meanwhile it tried to reduce debts of public sector units by encouraging people to invest in A shares with borrowed money. When that bubble popped the government panicked, just as it did when the yuan fell more than it bargained for. Growth in China is much less than 7%, fiscal deficit is 10% of GDP and debt is 300% of the GDP. Monetary policies cannot work any more so devaluing the currency is the only hope of stimulating economic growth by increasing exports. Slowing growth in China means less demand for commodities so prices are falling. We should be dancing in India. Low commodity prices reduce cost for our companies and bring down inflation. The Finance Minister never stops pushing the RBI to reduce interest rate. Already the Sensex and the rupee have fallen and reducing interest rate will cause the rupee to fall further. Foreign investors will flee and the Sensex and the rupee will collapse. The good thing is that China has a long way to fall whereas we are already near the bottom.

Can India become wealthy without a strong foundation?

The Prime Minister has announced a special package for Bihar, of Rs 1.25 trillion. Elections to the Bihar assembly must be completed before 29 November, so this is an obvious political move. Naturally, present Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar poured scorn on the package, having been pleading for one for months. Maybe the reason for his anger is that all the money is tied to development projects, so he cannot use any of it as handouts to bribe specific sections of society, to win seats. Perhaps, if he had carried out his duties as chief minister with due diligence there would have been no need for special packages for Bihar. Nitish Kumar has a personal hatred for the Prime Minister, forgetting the old principle that there are no friends or enemies in politics, only strategic alliances. He has embraced his old foe Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is out on bail for the fodder scam. A clear case of cutting his nose to spite his face. Bihar desperately needs very good infrastructure because states with good infrastructure index are the ones with high per capita incomes. UP is an exception. It is fairly high on the infrastructure index but its per capita income is only Rs 20,939, compared to Tripura at Rs 41,994, Karnataka at Rs 46,285 and Andhra at Rs 48,614, states which are much lower on the infrastructure index. Bihar is one rank below Bengal in the infrastructure index but the per capita income in Bengal is 35,432, over 2.5 times that of Bihar at a paltry Rs 13,790. Perhaps, it is no coincidence that both Bihar and UP have the highest fertility rates with the lowest literacy rates. Both governments blame the central government for not giving them special packages consisting of vast amounts of money but never explain why they should get special treatment over other states, which have as much need. Both these states are extremely lawless which means giving them money is like pouring it down a drain, unless governance improves. There seems very little evidence of that in Bihar where rates of rapes and kidnappings have been rising. School education was destroyed by the Congress with the Right to Education Act which forces private schools to reserve 25% of seats for children from poor families. This was a mean tax on the middle class as fees tripled for their children. However, most of these children would fail exams as they would get little help at home, which would bring the Act into disrepute. To hide that the Congress abolished all exams, including Class X Boards. With no exams to show if the children were learning anything teachers stopped teaching, resulting in a fall in standards. Now states are asking the center to revoke the policy of no exams and bring back Class X Boards. Politics is only about winning election and service is just something to be taxes. What about politics for service?

Is it possible to work part time and survive?

Sarvshreshth Gupta, an employee at Goldman Sachs, was found dead in a car park in San Francisco in April, presumed to have committed suicide. ' Sarvshreshth ' means ' supreme ' and he appeared to be so. A student of Delhi Public School he studied at Pennsylvania University, which is Ivy league, and then at Wharton, one of the top business schools in the world. He could not take the pressure at Goldman Sachs where he had to work 100 hours a week. A week is only 168 hours in total. Perhaps, being a high achiever he could not bear the thought of giving up. Deaths of people working in banks is not unusual as pressures to improve profits are relentless. Such pressure to make profits forces youngsters to resort to illegal activities with profound effects on the world. The Libor scandal could have affected trillions of dollars of business and worsened the financial crisis of 2008. Fines of a few billion dollars are loose change for banks and will not alter habits because the rewards are many times more. How much more? A trader at the London branch of JP Morgan Chase, nicknamed the London Whale because of his huge trades, lost the bank $6.2 billion in 2012 but the bank made record profits of $21.3 billion the same year. US regulators have forced banks to employ compliance officers to oversee their work, which is naturally hated by bank bosses. Now the New York Times has published an article, detailing the extreme working conditions at the e commerce firm, Amazon. The company actually boasts of " unreasonably high standards " for its employees. Employees talk of grown men crying, pressure on fathers to spend less time with their families and workers are encouraged to criticise their colleagues. Employees returning from cancer treatment or a miscarriage were edged out and thousands of staff are sacked every year, in what is known as, " purposeful Darwinism ". But Amazon is not alone. Elon Musk of Tesla scolded an employee for missing a corporate event to witness the birth of his child and a former Apple employee in Australia wrote that when he missed a business trip when his pregnant wife fell down stairs it was marked as a " performance issue ".  Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to his employees saying," I don't recognize this Amazon, and I very much hope you don't either." He also said that it would be crazy to stay at such a company and," I know I would leave such a company." While 82% of employees approved of the CEO only 62% would recommend a friend for a job there. Former employees of Amazon are in great demand because they are used to hard work and Uber recruits them heavily. Tech giants and banks are not the only ones. The Japanese have a word, ' karoshi ' which means ' death from overwork '. Fortunately, our civil servants are not in danger. They get paid to relax.

It's all about love, finds CAG.

When the Delhi government asked the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, CAG, to audit the 3 private power distribution companies in the capital last year they did everything to prevent the audit, repeatedly appealing to courts, saying that the CAG has no authority to audit private companies. We wondered why? Why should a company refuse a free audit when large accounting firms charge in millions. We got the answer yesterday when the CAG reported that customers have been taken for a ride by all 3 companies to the tune of Rs 80 billion. How did they do it? They manipulated consumer figures, bought costly power, suppressed revenue and gave undue favors to group firms. They misrepresented facts to the regulator, miscalculated assets and inflated costs. They had long term purchase agreements with power plants, for which they charged consumers, without buying any power from those plants. They also purchased an excess of power so Delhi was the only power surplus state in north India. Why then do we suffer from long periods of power cuts? They charged customers for replacing faulty meters even though the manufacturer was supposed to pay for them. There was serious conflict of interest in dealing with companies of the same group. Although the Delhi government owns 49% of equity, having invested Rs 7.5 billion in the companies, government representatives rarely turned up at board meetings. As wonderful an example of crony capitalism as we are likely to see. Perhaps the CAG should have accessed bank accounts of some of the officials. Let us see what other delights the CAG has reported in recent months. Land acquired for Special Economic Zones were sold off or put to other uses by the companies. When the CAG started to investigate 47 files regarding SEZs went missing. No doubt innocently destroyed by government officials. Rs 9 billion of illegal toll collected by highway operators were not declared to the Highway Authority. Civil servants are cheating the taxpayer of billions of rupees by being paid for fictitious medical, travel and other expenses. Municipal corporations of Delhi were found to have financial irregularities worth Rs 2.5 billion. We pay enormous charges for poor services, broken roads and piles of stinking garbage. Business fellows, or so called promoters, are milking companies by taking massive salaries. When Lord Black tried the same trick in the US he went to prison for 3 years and was fined heavily. Poor shareholders may not even know whether the same fellows actually own any shares in the company or have borrowed money from banks by pledging them. Politicians, civil servants and politicians in tight embrace. We observe their romance.

We need astrology to predict technology.

One Vivek Wadhwa, based in the US, writes that Indian industries have to innovate or perish. He then goes on to to list how the world has been changed by innovations in technology that have already taken place and tries to predict those that are coming. The processing power of computers has been doubling every 18 months even as Moore's law predicted doubling of capacity every 2 years. Technology is disrupting old ways of doing business. Amazon has destroyed old bookshops, Apple music has made music available to everyone and smart phones with apps, such as Uber, have cut down the cost of taxis. With 3D printing technology and robots it is cheaper to manufacture in the US and India than in China. A device the size of a book, costing Rs 35,000, has been invented in Delhi. Apparently this can perform 33 medical tests. Cost of solar energy has dropped by 98% and by 2020 energy from renewable sources, along with improved storage, will result in an abundance of energy even in the poorest villages. With unlimited energy we will have unlimited water simply by boiling sea water and with unlimited water and electricity we will have vertical farms, which will be sealed and so will not need pesticides. Even meat will be manufactured by technology so no need to slaughter animals. There will be no need to breed animals for meat so less methane will be produced, which will help in reducing global warming. Sounds as if the world will become a virtual paradise where people will relax in air conditioned comfort with cheap electricity, eat very cheap food washed down with pure water. Will it? Maybe cheap but they will still need to be paid for. Earlier Mr Wadhwa predicted that masses of people will lose their jobs as traditional businesses disappear. Robots will take over manufacturing, self-driving buses will have no need for drivers and computers with voice recognition will take over secretarial work. Hackers can take over your smart phone, listen to your conversations and pinpoint your location. Ethical hackers have already demonstrated how easy it is to take over a car. Imagine you are a driving to work in your self-driven car when it is taken over by kidnappers who demand payment in untraceable bitcoins. Perhaps Mr Wadhwa should see pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to understand what devastation can be wreaked by technology. The biggest danger is that, with all this cheap food and energy, there could be an explosion in the population of human beings which will be a disaster worse than any nuclear explosion. Forests will disappear, thousands of species will become extinct and wars will increase. The humongous profits of technology companies, like Apple depend on selling millions of products. Technology will make wars more lethal. No wonder astrology is big business.

What are we buying with our tax money?

Only around 36 million people, out of a total of 1270 million, in India pay income tax. That is a shocking statistic and is taken to indicate that there is large scale cheating by the people. The Chief Economic Adviser, Arvind Subramanian pointed out that the number of voters in India is 20 times larger than the total number of taxpayers. Politicians blame people for evading taxes and lazy journalists echo the same lies. So what is the truth? The rich can afford an army of accountants to advise them on how to reduce their tax bills. As they do all over the world. Who enacts tax laws with more loopholes than Swiss cheese? Politicians. But there maybe another reason why most Indians do not pay taxes, which is so shameful that politicians will never acknowledge it. Which is that the vast majority of Indians do not earn enough to pay taxes. The second reason why Indians get labeled as tax dodgers is because the taxable income is too low, whereas in the UK it is 4 times as much. At such low rates plumbers, electricians and taxi drivers should fall in the tax bracket. Politicians will not go after these people because they will be accused of being against the working class and lose votes. Reserve Bank Governor, Raghuram Rajan said," So the circle is complete. The poor and the underprivileged need the politician to help them get jobs and public services. The crooked politician needs the businessman to provide the funds that allow him to supply patronage to the poor and fight elections. The corrupt businessman needs the crooked politician to get public resources and contracts cheaply. And the politician needs the votes of the poor and the underprivileged. Every constituency is tied to the other in a cycle of dependence, which ensures that the status quo prevails." Succinctly put, sir. So, politicians need the poor to bribe for votes so they keep them poor by their policies. The massive black money in India is not because we dodge taxes but because crony capitalism results in massive corruption. Social handouts requires vast amounts of money so the government taxes virtually all income at source. We file tax returns at the end of the financial year and receive refunds from the income tax department. This requires so much work that it takes many months to transfer refunds into our accounts. Imagine if, like in the US, half the people, that is 600 million, were paying tax. The entire civil service would have to be employed in paying back tax refunds. The pernicious TDS system forces people to work for the government by deducting tax from rent or from sale of property and deposit it with the government. There is no explanation as to why a person should be forced to work as a servant of the government without any salary or compensation of any sort, while civil servants get huge perks. While they get pensions and free healthcare for life we get nothing for paying tax. You pay to buy something. What are we buying with our tax money?

Two red rags to the bulls.

Politicians and business fellows are seeing red. The Wholesale Price Index was - 4.05% in July. Wholesale prices have been falling since January because of weak commodity prices globally. This time the Consumer Price Index has come down to 3.78% in July after a tiny uptick in June when it was 5.4%. RBI Governor, Raghuram Rajan wants to maintain a real interest rate of 150 to 200 basis which means he can cut repo rate a hefty 1.25%, from 7.25% at present down to 6%. In theory, that will bring down the cost of borrowing and allow industries to set up new projects, adding new jobs, increasing tax collection and boosting growth. The high interest rate has not subdued car sales which grew by a robust 17% in July. Total number of Indians holding credit cards is a minuscule 20 million who spent a total of Rs 171 billion last year. This means that people buy only cars and real estate with bank loans. If car sales are buoyant despite high rates why are our movers and shakers squealing for rate cuts. Because real estate is in the doldrums and massive amounts of black money is stashed in properties. If property prices crash, as they should, to reflect market reality, they will lose heavily. It takes a lot of effort to make black money, involving enormous risks of feeling the heavy hand of the law on your collar, so it will hurt to see it vanish. The government has enacted a stringent black money law which must be scaring the bejesus out of these fellows, hence the enormous rage against the government and the Prime Minister. That maybe why no bill was allowed to pass in the monsoon session of the parliament. It may not be a question of interest rate and price indices. The rupee has been under pressure ever since China devalued its own currency, the yuan. If the rupee is overvalued our exports will fall further. Our exports have fallen for 8 months in a row and cheaper Chinese exports may hurt our exports even more. There is concern that other countries may weaken their currencies to stay competitive. Many African countries use the yuan for business or hold yuan as foreign currency reserve. So, the RBI may have to cut repo rate to bring down the value of the rupee. But how will it control the fall? Once the Chinese devalued the yuan the markets took that as a sign that the currency would fall further and started selling out. The government has been supporting the yuan to control the fall. China cut its interest rate to a historic low of 4.85% to support its stock market. It can do that because its inflation rate is just 1.5%. Our retail inflation at 3.78% is higher and may rise if a weaker rupee increases cost of imports, especially oil. The strength of the dollar and the Chinese moves have made it unnecessary to increase interest rate in the US but the Federal Reserve may be forced to increase rate by 25 basis points under sustained Republican attacks. The WPI and the CPI are red rags to the bulls of interest rate. How will the RBI manage them?

On Independence Day we demand real freedom.

Today is Independence Day in India. It is a national holiday and has become a day for speeches by politicians, exhorting Indians to work for the nation, while doing everything to hold back any progress. We pay taxes but get nothing from the state, no healthcare, no pension, no old age care but we are asked to surrender our subsidised gas cylinders while our useless members of parliament who did less than one day's work in the entire monsoon session get over Rs 3.5 million per year. Including free fights, medical care, electricity and laundry charges. Yet these extremely pampered people want double of what they are getting. And they have no sharam or izzat. A man, who has never done a day's productive work in his life and yet lives a life of luxury that Warren Buffet would envy, will not allow any amendment in the Land Acquisition Act because his heart is bleeding for poor farmers. Our flag does not belong to us. It belongs to fellows who whizz around in cars with revolving red lights, who are guarded by heavily armed security, who are allowed to take a ' companion ' when travelling abroad on government business and whose families are not subject to customs search when returning from junkets, allowing them to smuggle in any amount of contraband. The US also has a long list of rules for respecting its flag but no one is arrested for wearing clothes made in the colors of the flag. No wonder Americans love their country and we have a whole bunch of traitors who speak against India in supporting others. Enough talk. Here is what we want. We want an end to secrecy. We want to know who signed away our sovereignty so that we keep genuflecting to Pakistan despite continual attacks on our nation. Why do we repeatedly return gains made by the sacrifice of our gallant soldiers for nothing in return? We want respect and an end to the concept of VIP and VVIP. We want term limits for politicians. Since every profession has a retirement age we demand  that politicians not be allowed to stand for election after 70 years of age. The Rajya Sabha must not be a dustbin for politicians who have lost elections to the Lok Sabha. Two thirds of the Rajya Sabha must be eminent citizens who have never been in politics or a civil servant. We want all education institutions and sport bodies to be free of politicians and civil servants. We want freedom of speech, we want privacy from the government and we demand that cases be concluded within 2 years and no special treatment of criminal politicians or their broods. We want all municipalities, which are cesspools of corruption, to be abolished and most services to be privatised. Only monopolies, such as water and electricity distribution, should be controlled. We want our country to be rich and powerful. We are tired of being ashamed of our governments. We want freedom from the tyranny of our politicians. We want REAL INDEPENDENCE. 

Cheap electricity will electrify the economy.

The state electricity board in Rajasthan has debts of over Rs 1 trillion. Why? This is where the truth is fudged. The glib answer is that it is because electricity is being subsidised and the price of electricity should be increased regularly. The truth is that the subsidies are given, not to everyone, but to certain sections of society to get votes. Since most people live in villages politicians have promised free electricity to farmers to win elections. Figures from Rajasthan bear this out. From 1947 to 2013 industrial use of electricity has fallen from 71% to 45% while the share of agriculture has risen from 3% to 18%. Politicians are also huge users of electricity and since they are immune from prosecution they do not pay their bills. Including the self-professed Honest Man. To ask the rest of the urban population to pay for all the stolen electricity would raise bills to astronomical levels and result in protests. Electricity should be cheap in India because we are sitting on 301 billion tonnes of coal but mines were handed over to friends and relatives, without mining experience, so that a majority of mines are inactive. We had to import 242 millions tonnes of coal in the last fiscal and, since coal is only used for producing electricity we are having to pay huge bills. No doubt politicians and their friends made money on imports. They never lose. But price of anything is linked to demand and demand for electricity has fallen, partly due to the weak economy and partly due to a relatively mild summer, when the heat has been suppressed by regular rain, so there is excess capacity. Yet distribution companies are clamoring for higher prices. The reason is that generating companies have been promised payment for ' capacity utilisation ' which means that even if a plant is running at 10% capacity it has to be paid for its full capacity. So, the company cuts down on its fuel cost but gets paid in full. Double profits and double pegs all round. Our bills have doubled but we are told that electricity is being subsidised and we are so pleased. How stupid can we be? However, there is no doubt that producing electricity from coal is bad for the environment. Burning coal produces smoke into the atmosphere and tragically in Punjab children near a power plant developed uranium toxicity from ash. If India is to progress we need to produce large amounts of cheap electricity for manufacturing and domestic use, while decreasing pollution. Sounds paradoxical but it maybe possible to produce vast amounts of electricity from renewable sources. Germany is already way ahead, Wall Street firms are beginning finance renewable projects and even Saudi Arabia is talking about exporting renewable electricity. We need new technology that will run air conditioners in homes on solar energy. That will instantly reduce consumption from fossil fuels. Do we have the brains?

They should vote for change. Will they?

Campaigning for the coming elections in Bihar the Prime Minister said that Bihar still remains a BIMARU state, while Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, with BJP governments, have progressed. To which an instant riposte by an anti-BJP newspaper shows that on certain parameters, such as infant mortality, malnutrition, open defecation, and maternal mortality all the 4 BIMARU states are neck and neck. Maybe, but Bihar and UP still have the highest fertility rates in India at 3.5 and 3.3 against an all India average of 2.4. The main reason why Bihar will lag behind all other states in development is that it is last in literacy in all of India at number 35, with UP at 29. High birth rate with poor literacy leads to crime which is a leading industry in Bihar. Growth in the economy has made a section of people very rich and liberalisation has resulted in the availability of a vast array of international brands, from smart phones to luxury cars, from designer clothes to expensive restaurants. The poor can see shopping malls full of tempting goods while the ubiquity of televisions gives them a glimpse into the lifestyle of the rich. Crime is the quickest way to achieve the same lifestyle so they can be easily recruited by whoever is ready to pay. The top criminals join political parties which protect them from the police. No wonder conviction rates for criminals is only 10% in Bihar while Kerala tops the table with 77%. The intimate connection of crime with politics is illustrated in Bengal where most of the crimes are committed by party goons. Police are not allowed to investigate these crimes. Last year West Bengal police refused to cooperate in the investigation of terrorists making bombs in the house of a politician. Large numbers of people from Bihar travel to other states looking for jobs which leads to resentment among the locals who accuse Biharis of taking their jobs and committing crimes. Attacks on Biharis have taken place in Maharashtra and earlier there were fights in parliament because of attacks on Biharis in Assam. We Indians have little choice in the politicians. It is often a question of who we despise the least. The choice is even more limited in Bihar and UP. To shirk their responsibility politicians demand special help from the center. It would be grossly unfair to other Indians to shovel our tax money to ever growing populations in these states. That is why the anger. While the rest of India is changing towards k type with fewer children Bihar and UP are still r type who breed a lot and care little for their children, depending on the state to keep them alive. As the site of the ancient civilisation of Pataliputra and the university of Nalanda Bihar deserves better. Whether they choose to change or stick with the same old rot is in their hands.

If one expert predicted it why the surprise?

Only 18 million Indians invest in shares. Shares are the cheapest way to raise money because investors get paid dividends only when the company makes profits whereas it has to pay interest on loans even when it is losing money. Thus we are being constantly enticed with tales of huge returns over the longer term. The Congress even started a Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme to trap poorer segments of society into stocks, by labeling it ' savings ' and not a ' risky venture '. We are told to invest through mutual funds, supposedly run by experts, to reduce the element of risk but fund managers are more interested in increasing their own earnings rather than those of investors. Why discuss about shares? Because yesterday share markets across the world fell after the People's Bank of China devalued the yuan by 2%. Apparently this took markets by surprise. Guess what? The PBOC has devalued the yuan by another 1.6% this morning. But surely if these fund managers are such experts they should have seen this coming and factored it in much earlier. How is one to know what the PBOC is going to do, given that China is so secretive about its finances? One person predicted it way back in April. In his article, Anantha Nageswaran wrote that China's growth rate was not 7%, as officially published, but between 1.6% and 3%. Despite its brave talk about shifting the economy towards domestic consumption China was more dependent on exports because falling imports showed that domestic demand was weak. There was a huge bubble in the stock market, created by margin trading and China had been practicing quantitative easing by buying US bonds which released vast amounts of yuan into the market. The rich have been taking their money out of China and a currency depreciation will increase the outflow. How prescient! In May he wrote that China wanted to enter the Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund because that would make it a reserve currency. All central banks would buy yuan which would support its value. When this did not happen China resorted to more debt which has made bubbles in real estate and the stock market even worse. In July he wrote that despite its brutish behavior towards its neighbors China is deeply insecure. It tried to reduce debt by enticing people to buy shares and is now desperately trying to shore up the stock market. New graduates at a university were ordered to shout the slogan," Revive the A shares, benefit the people." How does the double devaluation affect India? The rupee will become stronger relative to the yuan, hurting exports. The RBI could cut the repo rate to weaken the rupee but that would make imports, especially oil, more expensive, adding to retail inflation. We hope that China collapses but are we prepared to meet the headwinds?

Is Reagan's voodoo economics the answer for India's problems?

A professor in Britain is cross with the Indian media for its sensational coverage of the government's intention of setting up a 7-member Monetary Policy Committee to decide interest rates in India. " Where is the deep discussion of whether inflation targeting makes sense for India? Or, if it does make sense, does a range of 2% to 6% make any sense?" he asks. There have been many articles in support of a MPC with former governors of the RBI weighing in with their views. Even the current governor has supported such a committee. The problem for everyone is the proposal that the MPC will have 7 members, 4 of which will be appointed by the government and the governor will lose his veto power, because no one trusts politicians or civil servants who are at the bottom of all that is rotten in India. The media was questioning as to whether the MPC would be independent. If it is going to be just another arm of the Finance Ministry why not save a lot of time and money by getting rid of the MPC, as well as the post of governor of the RBI, altogether and let a bunch of civil servants come out with a figure. After all, they control every other aspect of our lives, from sports to sex.  As for having an inflation target, what should the MPC focus on? Politicians are only motivated by hanging on to power and in their warped thinking economic growth at any cost leads to victory at elections. That is why the previous governor was pressured into keeping interest rate at 5% to 6% in 2009-2010 while inflation was raging at over 10%. " Developing countries and India are characterized by external supply-side constraints. If inflation rises above target because of a rise in drought-affected food prices, then raising interest rates will impact growth without impacting the source of inflation," writes the professor. The interest rate was raised to 8.5% in 2011 but was prematurely reduced to 7.25% in 2013. Inflation spiked again and it was raised to 8% in January, 2014 and, despite drought last year which caused high food prices, inflation has fallen to 5.4% and the RBI has cut rate to 7.25%. So high interest rate did work. In the opinion of the present governor interest rate should be 2% higher than the rate of inflation which will encourage savings and move people away from buying physical assets, such as gold. The real villain is irresponsible spending by politicians to win elections. Perhaps, instead of a MPC we should have a Fiscal Policy Committee, composed of independent economists, to control runaway spending by politicians and civil servants. Trouble is, economists are wrong too often. One economist thought that solar power will be too expensive at Rs 9 per unit. Companies are ready to sell solar power at Rs 5 per unit in Madhya Pradesh. Does it mean that India will benefit from Reagan's supply-side economics? Also known as ' voodoo economics '.

The merry go round of tax and corruption.

Delhi has been ranked at 379 among 476 municipal areas studied, in India. As the capital city Delhi hosts the central government. It also has a state government and 3 municipalities. The more the politicians the more the multiplication of corruption. The quickest way to clean Delhi is to get rid of the municipalities and let the state government be in charge of all services for which we pay such huge taxes. Some services, such as garbage collection, maintenance of traffic and street lights and repairing roads can be privatised. Contracts should be awarded by competitive bidding and fines for shoddy work will be written into contracts. Instead monopolies, such as power distribution and car parking have been handed over to private contractors, resulting in a huge rise in electricity bills and cars are double or triple parked, causing traffic jams. In the assembly elections in January the Aam Aadmi Party won 67 out of 70 seats. Local BJP workers must have worked against the party to stop the anti-corruption drive by the Prime Minister, just as they sabotaged Gen Khanduri in Uttarakhand. Apparently 400 buildings have been found unsafe in north Delhi, which is a joke because people have made structural changes in almost every house or apartment without permission and without safety advice from an engineer. Recently the High Court has allowed regulators to enforce hotels and restaurants to sell bottled water at the printed price. Higher charges were allowed by the Supreme Court but a new law in 2011 gives more power to the government. In India the Maximum Retail Price, or MRP, must be printed on every item sold to the public. No doubt, the intention of the law was to prevent overcharging by shopkeepers but, like every law in India, it just shifted the corruption elsewhere. The MRP printed on bottles of water, sold in restaurants, is more than double the MRP of identical bottles sold in corner shops. So, manufacturers and hoteliers are cooperating in ripping off customers. MRP misuse is even more rampant in hospitals where the MRP on medical devices is often double of what the hospital pays to buy it from the manufacturer. A fixed MRP helps the government to collect taxes on every product and this is the source of all corruption. Why is it fine to sell a bottle of beer at 3 times the price but not water? After all the cooling and service is the same. Because huge taxes on beer means that the government is a beneficiary in cheating the customer. Only 3% of people in India pay income tax while about half of all Americans pay income tax. Imagine if 600 million Indians, almost double the entire US population, paid income tax. The government would be inundated and all work would come to a standstill. So, we maybe helping the government by not paying taxes. Makes up for the cheating.