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TRAI seeks views on spectrum Auction!

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  News Item: https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/trai-begins-consultation-on-5g-auction-seeks-views-on-private-networks-121113001480_1.html The next round of auctions! The next spectrum!  Is auction the best way to give out resources owned by the people of this country for individual gain? Let us take a look at what an auction is and how this would hurt the common man. 3G was auctioned. Please see the table above. Government made nearly 51,000 crores every year out of spectrum licensing alone. Please note government just hands it over to people to work with it. Government per se does not do any job. Just to register who is going to use, how much of spectrum, the government gets paid 51,000 crores. Essentially somebody is getting paid monstrous sums for doing nothing. Of course, this amount goes into the common pool and therefore, should reduce taxes on us. Does it? With the new telecom policy, almost everyone of us carry one to two phones and we all pay GST. Result
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Indian Customs Day

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  January 26th was the Customs Day. Four years back I was invited to the celebrations in Coimbatore. For the last few years, I do not find myself, getting invited! Maybe, because I 'pay' much lesser taxes and duties these days. Well, I wanted to draw your attention to the message given by our FM, Mrs Nirmal Sitharaman on this day  at New Delhi, this year. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/work-focus-of-indian-customs-shifted-to-trade-facilitation-fm-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/80480576.cms See the report in the Economic Times the next day (27th). The ideas and the thoughts are absolutely lofty. Yes, Customs should become 'people' friendly and do 'business and trade facilitation' from now onwards. And that the Customs is going through a 'transformative process' and become more 'people centric'. I could not but help recollecting a similar lofty statement made by the then FM, Yaswant Sinha, in the year 1998 when he took ove
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India Budget 2021-22

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   India Budget 2021-22 is 'unprecedented'! Every budget has its own share of surprises and tough situations that they have all tried to stall. On a birds eye view of the budget, this has some new things that we could be happy about. On one side, this is more an income expense statement for the upcoming year, which is what budgets are supposed to be. For the last few decades, budgets have become policy announcing platforms. Budgets are supposed to be a plan for income and expense. I think, with this budget the FM is reclaiming that position for budgets. But for the two non-finance approvals that also went through with the finance bill, there is nothing to complain about. Having said that, budgets should mostly talk of allocation of funds for different spheres of social life in this country. Defence, health care, education, etc., Of course, health care takes in a large increase in allocation thanks to Covid situation and its immunisation scheme. But what happens with education a
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