Difficult to change when you are so old.

"Yanis Varoufakis is a self confessed Marxist-Leninist professor of economics," wrote A Nageswaran. He was right when he took on the Troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund over "bailout loans thrust on Greece". The vote for Brexit in Britain, the diminished vote share for Angela Merkel, the victory of two Europhobic parties in Italy, and the rise of right wing leaders in Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland have proved him right again. Varoufakis has written a book, Adults In The Room, in which he lays out his policies "that a so-called capitalist finance minister would have been glad to own up to". "He was willing to reduce the number of value-added tax (VAT) rates and the rates themselves. He said it made no sense to have a top VAT rate of 23%." The Indian government, on the other hand, has imposed multiple rates under the Goods and Services Tax, introduced last year. Then there are surreptitious charges. GST on gold is 3%, but there is a customs duty of 10%, which naturally encourages smuggling of gold into the country. Then there are hidden taxes called cess. While extra taxes on tobacco products maybe justified, it makes no sense imposing sly taxes on coal which is solely used for producing electricity. Imposing huge cess on cars takes them out of reach of ordinary people. Cess on income tax was increased from 3% to 4% in this year's budget. As for petrol the ex-refinery cost of petrol is Rs 27.51 per liter and the pump dealers commission is Rs 2.5 per liter, making a total of Rs 30, which means the total tax on petrol is in excess of 100%. The government cut excise duty by Rs 2 in the budget but added a cess of Rs 8 per liter of petrol. And yet, fuel prices have not been raised for six days because Karnataka election is on 12 May. Varoufakis was willing to privatize Greek railway, but so greedy are the terms for the sale of Air India that no airlines is willing to bid for it. While railing against Greek oligarchs Varoufakis "was willing to let them come into the system without scaring them away straightaway with raids, fines and extortionist demands". The government is cock-a-hoop about squeezing an extra Rs 1.5 trillion in direct taxes and has increased cases against taxpayers by three-fold in an effort to arm-twist people into paying more. And is proposing to wring an extra Rs 1 trillion from GST in this financial year. GST is an indirect tax which the poor are also forced to pay. This government "failed to reverse the path of de-liberalization or anti-liberalization that had characterized the 10 years of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime. Instead, it embraced them and doubled down on some of their bad policies such as the 'right to education policy and, worse, on tax terrorism," wrote a disappointed Nageswaran. After all, India is very ancient.