We don’t want taxman terrorism

I say this on account of reports I have read of his meeting with Income-Tax commissioners and chief commissioners in Delhi last week. Our Finance Minister reportedly urged this most rapacious breed of Indian official to go forth and spy on people wearing Rolex watches, driving fancy cars and buying expensive air tickets. Only 75,000 Indians admit to earning more than Rs 10 lakh a year, he is reported to have said, but you could find more people than that in the drawing rooms of Delhi by simply attending a week of dinner parties.

May I say that the Finance Minister could probably find more people like that within the ranks of the Excise and Revenue Departments. And, while those you meet in the drawing rooms of Delhi have made their money through the blood and sweat of hard work, those Chidambaram is encouraging to go forth and raid have bought their Rolex watches by theft and corruption. Does Chidambaram not know what happens in an income tax raid? As someone who, on more than one occasion, has witnessed these raids, may I remind him that they are the sort of things that should not be allowed to happen in a civilised country.

The way it works is like this. The raiders operate by stealth, so in the early hours of a morning you might sleepily open your door to find them barge in and spread themselves into every private nook and corner of your life. They read your letters, examine every note you might have written, demand the prices of every object in the house, ruffle through your underwear drawers and make lists of everything they find. Throughout this process, the victim of the raid is not allowed to make a telephone call, drink a glass of water or go to the toilet without being observed by one of the raiding party. The raid can sometimes last for days and by the end of it, when the victim is finally broken down with humiliation, sleep deprivation and other terror tactics, the head of the raiding party usually comes forward with a ‘‘deal’’. The victim pays a huge amount of money—depending on how much he has—to be allowed to carry on with his life and business without being harassed daily by the Income-Tax Department.

Even murderers in our fair and wondrous land are treated better because to barge into their houses the police need to have a case. The Income-Tax Department makes its case after the raid and sometimes their interrogation tactics are so severe that victims end up dead. Our prime minister may remember the case of a young Sikh businessman who ended up ‘committing suicide’ while being interrogated all night by the Enforcement Department in Delhi’s Khan Market.

No country can become rich and prosperous when officials are given these kind of powers and when people who live off the fat of the land—politicians and officials—can make as much money as they like while people who work hard are treated like criminals. The most depressing thing about our new Finance Minister is that his statements and tactics are disturbingly reminiscent of the old economic dictatorship days when prosperity was banned and efficient businesses could be fined for being too successful. Those who began by hailing Chidambaram’s budget as yet another ‘dream’ budget have already discovered that they were wrong and many are publicly eating their words. If he now plunges us into a period of spying and income tax raids, he could become the most unpopular Finance Minister we have seen in years. He could also take India backwards instead of forwards and that would be unforgivable since he inherited a booming economy in an India that was finally beginning to enjoy feeling good about itself.

Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com