Flying, while on the ground.

The BBC ran a story about a Mr Bahadur Chand Gupta who has bought an old Airbus A300 and parked it somewhere outside Delhi. For less than a dollar people, those who cannot afford to fly, are allowed to sit in the plane and are given a glimpse of what happens during real commercial flights. They are also given sweets. How sad that there are so many Indians who cannot afford a simple necessity. The cheapest flight from Delhi to Mumbai costs more than the cheapest flight from Barcelona to London and Indians earn much less than Europeans. Why do flights cost so much in India? Because of very high taxes. Politicians and civil servants will never address that problem because they get to fly free and their flights are paid for by our taxes. So they keep denying that airport charges and fuel taxes are responsible for the high airfares, blaming the airlines for not passing on the fall in international fuel prices. The previous government built 8 airports in smaller cities at a cost of $50 million but these have not seen a single scheduled flight. It's not because people are misers. The poor want to fly, to eat out and to watch movies, the simple pleasures of life that are taken for granted in western countries and which they see on television. But taxes keep on increasing, making them more expensive even for the middle class. Socialism is written into our constitution, which means very high taxes on anything labeled as luxury, such as flying, and then allowing the poor to travel by filthy, overcrowded trains, without air-conditioning or clean toilets, for a few rupees. But, guess what? The poor reject being treated worse than cattle. The railways report 150 million fewer passengers in the first 5 months of this year and 191 million fewer passengers last year. The fall in numbers of passengers is in local and suburban services, whereas numbers have increased in air-conditioned long distance passengers. Clearly people prefer to travel by road or the metro, where this service is available, even if they cost more. The fewer the users the less the tax collection. Why do these people fail to understand this simple fact? The Prime Minister wants a digital India but our online start-ups are moving to Singapore because taxes are too high and arbitrary in India. We are a lowly 131 out of 189 countries on fixed broadband service and at 155 on mobile broadband service. Not much chance of being a digital economy, is there? What is scary is that there is a complete lack of understanding. The dengue epidemic is being seen as a lack of healthcare. It most definitely is not. It is because the municipalities did not clean the drains before the monsoon and did not sweep away stagnant water. The Chief Minister held back Rs 5 billion from the municipalities while spending, you guessed it, Rs 5 billion on commercials. Poverty means NGOs outnumber police by 2:1, which means billions in funds. Enjoy.