Posts Tagged ‘India’

21 kids die. Who is to blame?

Saturday, July 2, 2011



In last 2 days 21 babies have died in a hospital in Kolkata. Fingers are being raised on the Hospital management. Everyone wants to know who is to blame.
Once again, I would like to bring the problem of India’s huge population. How? Read on.

The event happened in a Government run, BC Roy Hospital in Kolkata. The children who were admitted were in critical condition. Though the state’s Health Secretary MN Roy explained that last June, close to 280 children were admitted out of which 87 died. However, this year 395 children were admitted but only 86 died. Well, he had to say something so he used his statisticians.

Everyone wishes to have everything in order and wants the Government to offer World Class services but no one cares to help the cause.

USA is 3 times larger than India in terms of the total area but holds 4 times lesser population compared to India. Can you imagine how difficult it is to manage this enormous mass of people in a country like India? Of course, everything is possible but the pace at which the population has increased, the economy or services had no chance to catch up. Or we will have to wait for the time when IIM pass outs get into politics to manage the country’s operations.

Another aspect is that the people in the subject who had to go through the unfortunate event of losing their children, would possibly belong to labor class or people poor than the lower middle class, who not even in their dreams can afford to think about treatment in private hospitals. Once again, it is the population factor. Have you ever seen a never ending queue in a hospital like Fortis? No. We have the quality services in our country but they do come at a cost. If someone is poor its his or her own problem.

India carries burden of a large percentage of economically poor people. The trend shows that these people include daily wagers, labor class people. The mental tendency is to give birth to more off springs who can earn more and their financial situation may improve. But they don’t realise the fact that while bringing up the children, they get poorer and poorer and none of the children gets proper attention and care in terms of education or health. A lot of times, they do not get complete education which results in them follow their parents and work as labor and the cycle goes on.

What needs to be done? Well, something can not be done in any time in the near future. The damage has been caused. We may be able to control the population by a crore or two but it won’t help. Something should have been done 20-30 years back. Or people should understand the importance of education. Only education can improve the situation, if at all. Education will ensure the present kids get the opportunity to run with the time and secure the future of their children.

A lot of people may find my views insensitive but the truth can not be suppressed. Imagine, our population was in the same ratio as the US. We would have done wonders. Everything from Corruption to Facilities, Cut off lists to education system, Public transport to Traffic snarls would have been at their optimized best.

Instead of cursing the system everyday, one should accept the facts that population is the reason India is so poor and to survive in this era, you need to be on the money to live a comfortable life.

News Source : NDTV India

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E-Filing Income Tax Return

Friday, May 13, 2011



I had previously expressed my anger about the E-Filing procedure for Income Tax in India. I had mentioned how faulty the mechanism was and you will be left stranded without getting to know the actual status of your E-Filed Return’s status.

What happened today gave me a bit of relief. I received a confirmation from the Income Tax Department of India that my Income Tax Return filed for the year 2010-11 has been received successfully on December 9, 2010. Well, the surprising thing is that it took them almost 6 months to acknowledge the receipt.

So one thing is for sure, the quickest and easiest method to file your income tax return in India is going to the Income Tax office only. With the current functional situation of the Income Tax Department that I have witnessed, it seems impossible for them make the process completely electronic.

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India’s Population is the root of all problems

Wednesday, January 12, 2011



India's Population
I have been getting into debates with my colleagues and friends every other day over Corruption, Terrorism, Reservation and other social problems faced by the people of India. I personally believe or I should say am confident to say that the root of all these problems is the Population. Our Billion instead of strengthening the nation’s system is choking it at every corner.
Let’s take a few examples here.
I visited Mumbai for the first time last summer. The local train transport system, which is one of the most important lifelines of Mumbai are too overloaded. There is no route or time when you don’t have to stand in each other’s face while travelling. Of course here it is obvious that the cause is Population.

Here is another example. Reservation. My blood boils when people are hitting the streets protesting against the Government for not offering them reservation in Educational Institutes or Government Offices. Why the hell would a person with talent and qualification require reservation? The answer is simple. You get 100,000 applications for 200 vacancies. The people look for an easy way out to beat the crowd. The system simply should take the ones who clear the tests, have good educational scores. One of my friends could not get admission in a college nearby whereas another of his friends could manage it. Why? Because the later had a reserved quota for his caste even though his rank was 10 times lower than the former.

Another example is of Terrorism. Our Security agencies aren’t as inferior as it seems. They may be using old-age weapons and armory but do have the capability to fight against Terror at all times. Now even if they do have information that some terrorists have entered a city or are planning to enter, it becomes too difficult to filter out them of the crowd. How would you do it? It is just near to impossible because of the high population.

We keep on complaining of the increased prices of daily use articles. There was a debate on NDTV India yesterday over the increased prices of Onions. Onions are one of the most used article in Indian Kitchens. Now the representative of the Govt. was sitting and blaming the system that due to the long supply chain the Onions picked up at Rs 15 per KG reach Rs 60 per KG to the market. Again the system is not compatible with the huge population.

Poverty in India has been another aspect that is talked about a lot. The people who are poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. Once again the population thing comes in to the picture. The poor people keep on increasing there family size so that their children could also work and increase the total household income but in turn they are pushed further downwards while trying to feed the big family. Hence things never change for them.

We have stuffed every city possible to look for Jobs, better lifestyle but have not been able to be sensible enough to upgrade our system. I know it is easier to say this sitting in front of this piece of machine but what can be done? No, those who say rise up and change the system are morons. You just can’t. It is not possible to do this on such a large scale.

Anyhow, I think I was not able to keep my idea as well as I wanted but you would have got the idea how things matter.

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Things to know – E-Filing Income Tax Return

Thursday, December 9, 2010



I am a proud tax payer in India. Though I don’t see a direct benefit in paying Income Tax, after knowing of thousands of million rupees scams, still I feel like doing it. This year I thought of going the easier way by filing my income tax return online. Was it easy? Read on.

Let’s first see how the normal tax filing thing works. You get your salary after tax deduction and after a financial year ends, the company gives you a statement called Form-16. This form shows your earnings, savings, income tax calculation, tax paid and any refund applicable. Using this form you can fill out a ITR 1 form (also known as Saral form). Saral means Easy. Honestly it isn’t a tough thing to do. You just have to copy the corresponding details from Form-16. After you fill it up, you just have to submit it to the nearest Income Tax office, get the acknowledgement and you are done. (Last time I was in the Mohali Income Tax office, they were offering free tea and snacks to the tax payer. Isn’t it lovely? Otherwise who even bothers to see your face in a Government office).

So as I said, this time I thought of submitting the return via the website of Income Tax Department which I though would be easier, quicker and flaw free. Being tech savvy makes you really crippled. You tend to skip even the smallest of travelling trips. So I was happy that there is another thing I could do sitting at home.

To start off, I visited the Income Tax E-filing website. Registered on the website and logged on. Then I needed to use the Download section on the left hand panel which gave me the procedure to move ahead.

I was taken to a page where I was required to download a utility which is available in PDF and Excel format.(Either one can be used. I would recommend PDF). It has all the columns like the ITR-1 form I mentioned above. I was supposed to enter my earnings, savings, deductions, tax paid, employer information etc. Once done, there are some cute buttons meant to calculate the income tax. It calculates and checks the form is correctly filled. The final step in this utility is to generate an xml file. For people who are unaware what an xml file means, click here.

Anyways, once the xml file is generated, I had to go to the Submit Return section on the left hand panel, choose the assessment year and upload the xml file. And I just finished submitting my online tax return. Sounds easy?

Here comes the surprise, if you do not have the capability to e-sign documents, which I think 99% of people in India won’t have, you are required to take a print of ITR-V which is sent to you email after you submit the xml, sign it and send it to a PO Box in Bangalore. (Bengaluru).

Now all my happiness went down the drain, the main motive of submitting the return online was to skip the trip to the Income Tax Office. And now I had to go to an even worse place, a Post Office. Buy a Rs 5 stamp, post the envelope and wait for the confirmation. The Income Tax people are kind enough to give you a 120 day period to send the form. So now the last step is to send the form.

Wait, the story doesn’t end here! I did not get a confirmation for more than 3 months, and I thought they must be a bit slow to process. Immediately after 120 days were over, I get an email saying either my form-V or it was not filled correctly. So now I don’t even know what was the actual problem. A bigger mess.

Finally I went through the complete process again, and printed form-V. I just matched it with the form I sent last time and found both were different. God! I think there was some problem with the utility last time which did not generate the correct output.

So now I sent the form again, and still waiting for a confirmation. Its just a week since I sent it, but I am doubtful if this was a good idea in the first place.

My recommendation- DO NOT USE THE E FILING PROCESS. GO TO THE LOCAL INCOME TAX OFFICE INSTEAD.

P.S. The Income Tax E Filing Website says that you can send the form-V via regular post or speed post. However none of the post offices accept speed post to a P.O. Box.

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