Calling for higher involvement from individuals in addressing social sector issues of the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched for a “tax plus one” system and said that citizens should do more towards society besides paying taxes. He exhorted that more people have started paying their taxes, not because of the threat of penal action but because taxpayers have faith that their money is being used properly and for the welfare of people. “Paying tax is ‘prakriti’ (natural), not paying tax is ‘vikriti’ (deformity). But paying tax plus doing more is ‘sanskriti’ (culture),” he said at a townhall meeting with IT professionals from across the country. At the townhall, apart from ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Manoj Sinha, Prakash Javadekar, Harsh Vardhan, Jitendra Singh and SS Ahluwalia, several industry leaders including Anand Mahindra, CP Gurnani, Kunal Bahl, Hari Om Rai, Vineet Nayar and Debjani Ghosh were present. Modi interacted with employees of companies such as Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Cisco Systems, Persistent Systems, Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services and Mindtree, who apprised the Prime Minister of their social sector initiatives and asked him questions about taking forward their efforts. “I appreciate honest tax payers whose numbers have increased. But tax that is paid is part of the system. Social service is tax-plus something. We need to create that,” Modi said. He was responding to a question from one of the employees of an IT firm, who asked that how could people contribute to India’s social development beyond paying their taxes. During 2017-18 fiscal, the direct tax to GDP ratio at 5.98 per cent, highest in the last 10 years. There is a growth of more than 80 per cent in the number of returns filed in the last four financial years from 3.79 crore in FY 2013-14 (base year) to 6.85 crore in FY 2017-18, according to the finance ministry data. “We have a culture where we like to only criticise business and industry. This is not a line of thought I agree with,” Modi said. “We have seen today, in this townhall programme, how leading corporates are doing excellent social work, urging their employees to venture out and serve.” The IT sector employees who were interacting with Modi from various centres in the country including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Bhubaneswar and asked questions on a number of social issues such as clean India initiative, agricultural development, education, inclusive development among others. On the query on helping farmers and agricultural labourers, Modi said that through volunteering efforts, a lot can be done in the agriculture sector. Youngsters must venture out and work for the welfare of farmers, he said, and appealed to hard-working farmers to embrace drip irrigation. “We have become very careless when it comes to consumption of water,” he said. “We need to conserve water and recycle water too.” Modi said inclusive growth is the way ahead and it is important to create an India where everyone has equal opportunities. He also launched a Self4Society portal, where different companies, non-governmental organisations and individuals can network to combine their efforts towards a social cause. So far, 87 organisations have registered on to the portal including companies such as Google, NIIT Technologies, Accenture, Amazon, Mindtree, Genpact, Microsoft.
