For Bettor or Worse

One more scandal. In Cricket. And with origins in our north-westerly neighbor. Before you yawn and throw the newspaper away, cursing them for rehashing old copy, pause a moment. Media-baiting apart, recycling strategy does not sell newspapers, at least on a sustainable basis — and mine certainly wears its readership high on its sleeve. If this be the truth, there must be more to it, including a reason why Cricket has kept company with controversy with striking regularity of late.

My brush with the purported gentlemanliness of cricket came from pages of the same newspaper, years ago. The mid-80s, newly launched HT Patna edition headlined "It's Not Cricket" for some fiasco on the ground — the kind that’s hardly likely to cause you to blink in our more cynically evolved times. A question to the Pater elicited an etymological explanation in the game's history and tradition-rich lore. Not sure if it significantly altered my on-field behaviour (or lack of notable achievement), but much before Atticus Finch, it was an excellent introduction to that intangible called sportsman spirit.

Those wistful memories, though, are not the only reason to grieve the morass of modern Cricket. Mind you, the actual charges the tainted trio from Pakistan (and Akmal D’Artagnan) stands in the dock for are neither unique nor original. More than a few of India's own, including our Hon'ble MP from Moradabad (though his erstwhile tarnished reputation has lately been alight with some other flame!) have shamed cricket and left even its diehard fans wondering whether on-field exploits are driven by sporting acumen or Mammonic influence. One can go so far as to argue that this skepticism; and an exposure overdose have led to Cricket's (relatively) flagging following — and the gradual rise of other sports.

In any event, no nation has made such inseparable acquaintance with controversy as Pakistan. Go back but a few years and Pak cricket has been newsworthy more for unsavoury dealings and repeated individual misconduct than genuine cricketing reasons. If unconvinced, try and picture best-batsman-of-generation Inzamam (thus spake Imran; move over Lara, Sachin!), Peter Pan cowboy Afridi, sex-n-speed (pun intended) posterchild Shoaib Akhtar, twice-named Yousuf (more pun intended) and check if images of occasional glory are not tainted interminably with talent-wasting notoriety. Indeed Pakistani cricketers come and go (often for multiple voluntary and forced retirements!) but despite several efforts to clean their Augean stables, the muck refuses to wash off.

Perhaps the internecine bickering and dubious (on- and off-field) debacles in Pak cricket could be brushed off as symptomatic of the rot in that country. The world has, after all, been comfortably numbed to bad news from Pakistan. Nor is it easy to mourn the absence of sporting events there, given what transpired when the Lankan Tigers last dared to venture. Yet, history shows that existence of exclusion begets politics of hate. An economically challenged, educationally backward, and socially fragmented state is fertile ground for unleashing the worst within. If no other, then this is good reason to shed a tear for Muhammad Amir. Not from the country's oligopolistic elite (on whose doorstep lies the blame for most of the mess that is Pakistan, and whose fiefdom the nation's cricket has traditionally been), Amir would not have had it easy. His was a long, heroic journey from the Swat Valley, now less famous for panoramic beauty than notorious for the war against Taliban, to match-winning brilliance at Lord's. For a nation short on inspiration, at least of the right variety, his fairytale rise was profoundly apposite. Those no-balls, alas, shattered that illusion.

At another level, we must ponder if too much is invested in the game in the sub-continent: the ridiculous shenanigans before, during, and after IPL ought to have triggered such thoughts anyhow. As a case in point, consider the pointless brouhaha over another no-ball and symphony of sympathy for Sehwag (he too woke up to it overnight!). For sure lament the decline in the spirit of the game with such incidents, but let us equally appreciate the larger context of its commercialization where, indeed, we have played a leading role. And certainly go easy on ill-founded, frenzied waves of jingoism — it is, after all, still a game :)

PS: My vote too, for legalizing betting. Like the war against tobacco teaches us, one plays them best when allowed out of the closet. Viva Transparency!

Damp Squib

Months ago, the draft of a new Direct Taxes Code for India had drawn much public acclaim, including in these pages. This was not without reason. For starters, the existing system was visibly knocking on the doors of obsolescence. Hence, any review intended to simplify its archaic tenets (thereby reducing repeated recourse to judicial interpretation) was hugely welcome. Next, a forward-looking document shorn of its predecessor's dotage could enable the taxman to better engage and deploy New Age tools. This promised a sea change in efficiency and effectiveness of Direct Tax administration (on counts like evasion detection, internal security etc) making it a progressive legislation worthy of a budding economic superpower billing. Last and not least, the very idea of promoting larger debate prior to finalization bespoke intellectual honesty and inclusiveness rare in our policymaking experience. A thumbs-up for this wiki approach was much in line.

However, implicit in all these arguments (in fact providing them overall credence) was the game-changing nature of actual changes proposed to the tax framework. If it were to fall prey to back-room intrigue and lobbying, as the more cynical amongst us foretold, it would be a real pity in the face of path-breaking promise. Even as these fears lurked, the revised discussion paper one heard of a few months back also sounded headed in a compromise-riddled direction. And sadly that is exactly what has finally come home to roost in the proposal formally introduced in Parliament this week.

So how has the cheer of the finest toast for Pranab-da soured into old-wine-new-bottle despair? Selfishly or otherwise, my first disappointment is in the largely superficial personal taxation changes. In fact, perusing the reams of newsprint dedicated to laud the 'extra income' (a princely INR 24,000 at the upper end) through marginally tweaked tax slabs, one wonders when our mainstream media will mature beyond cliché. (To avoid sounding like a stuck record, we steer clear of media-bashing — richly deserved as it may be. There is zero surprise in our Fourth Estate's centrist and arguably pro-Congress slant.) In any event, basic math of inflation on the cast-in-stone slab values itself beats hollow the DTC's pithy positioning as a taxpayer windfall.

Going beyond this, one must rue the lost potential of a truly simplified tax framework. With 6.5% incidence sacrificed at the altar of exemptions and political expediency, the Government had a clear shot at reducing cost and complexity. Removal of potentially distortionary criteria would have improved investment decision-making for aam aadmi and HNI alike. Equally, a move to EET could have boosted long-term savings (PF withdrawal is an example). All that has been belied. Perhaps most importantly though, the survival of the exemption regime has reduced the leeway to lower rates and punt on increased adherence, ultimately limiting the ability to fund GOI's ambitious developmental agenda.

The saving grace has been the refusal to tinker with Capital Gains Tax that would have created an artificial portfolio churn opportunity (en masse profit-booking in March, followed by resumed longs in April, a cost minus any economic value add) that has been avoided. (In lighter vein, the DTC is also the government's first assertion of having achieved its gender equality goals. So the deduction differential allowed for woman taxpayers stands withdrawn, unless merely saved for a subsequent budget to reinstate!)

Elsewhere, the other notable revision in the Bill versus its draft is the compromise on corporate taxation. It is an easy argument that GOI frittered a chance to overhaul capital allocation in our economy. The erstwhile proposal to predicate MAT on gross assets vs book profits represented a fundamental change in the much-misused play of lowering tax liability via investment-led depreciation. From being a tool to manage tax, investments could have emerged into the light, to be evaluated for true CBA. The Big Business lobby however (including relatively genuine voices in its capital-intensive cohort) ensured we are left with Photoshop-type interventions to lower tax rates through elimination of cess, surcharge etc. If these were temporary inclusions in our tax regime, as successive FMs gave us to understand, it hardly needed a large-scale DTC exercise to get rid of them. Equally, there is no surety that some other flavour suiting the incumbent political mood will not 'force' the government of the day to resurrect these ostensibly stopgap devices.

All told, this residual pot of half measures still sets the Taxman back 1% of their INR 5.8 lakh crore annual kitty, without any redeeming expectation of increased adherence. A solitary hope remains — with the suspense of end-Feb Budget jitters gone, we could leverage a long-term Tax structure come 2012. If only the redoubtable Mr Mukherjee had been inspired by the spectacular doomsday caper of the same name, the changes would be a bit more appreciable...