Table of Contents
1. Reform 101: More thought is needed on the proposed regulatory body for higher education
2. A broken tax chain: The GST’s faulty design has prevented the economy from benefiting fully
from the indirect tax regime.
3. The meaning of secularism: As the Congress prepares for crucial State and general
elections, much will depend on its ideological clarity.
4. Then there were 16: As the knockout stage begins in the World Cup, it’s anybody’s guess
5. In the city of refugees : As the monsoon rains threaten to ravage the Rohingya refugee
camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, relief workers struggle to balance the vital work of
damage control with the pressing demands of inter
-personal conflict resolution. Vidya Krishnan reports on the routine tragedies of
life in the world’s largest ‘refugee city’.
• Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill drafted by the Center
• Vitally important tools for nation building: skill-building and educational opportunity
• HECI bill aims: expansion and quality of human resource development
• 2016-17: Uni 864, Colleges 40,026
• Gross enrolment ratio of students was only about 26%
• To put this in perspective, there were only 20 universities and 500 colleges at the time of
Independence.
• Previous expert committees: promoting autonomy, access, inclusion and opportunity for all.
• Centre should give sufficient time to academia, the teaching community and society at large to submit considered opinions on the draft proposals.
• Among the key questions that need resolution is the future role of multiple regulatory bodies that currently exist for engineering, medicine and law.
• Yash Pal Committee had recommended that they should be brought under the ambit of a single commission.
• There is a case to include other professional education streams as well, including architecture and nursing.
• The aim should be to set academic benchmarks for each stream, with sufficient autonomy to innovate on courses and encourage studies across disciplines.
• Maintaining a balance on allocation of funds and ensuring transparency will now depend on the proposed advisory council to the HECI.
• It is welcome that the States are represented on the advisory council, giving it a federal character, although it is the Centre that will have the final say in all matters, not even the apex HECI.
A broken tax chain
• A year ago, GST was launched: heralded as the new freedom
• Is the economy headed in the right direction?
• Arguments in favour of the GST
ease of doing business
make markets efficient
yield higher tax collections: government would be able to deliver better services
lead to lower prices
GST was presented as a win-win situation for everyone.
• Businesses have not yet experienced ‘ease of doing business’
though some have adjusted to it.
• GST rates were fixed rather late
• GSTN: volume of traffic
• Complexity: businesses had to file one form by the 10th of the month,
check the next form by the 15th and file the third form by the 20th.
• The form to be filed by the 15th was to be auto populated on the
basis of returns filed by the suppliers to the business.
• If some suppliers delayed filing or did not file, one had to chase them
or one could not file one’s return.
• This proved to be insurmountable for many.
• For each State one was operating in, three returns had to be
processed every month.
• Then there was an annual return to be filed.
• So for each State, a business had to file 37 returns in a year.
• Composition Scheme: small businesses
• turnover between ₹20 lakh and ₹75 lakh; later the limit was raised to ₹1.5
crore.
• They could not give input tax credit (ITC) and if anyone bought from
them, then the buyer had to pay the tax that the small business
should have paid.
• This was the reverse charge mechanism (RCM).
• These small businesses were not permitted to make inter-State sales
so that their market became limited in case they were at the border
of the State.
• Thus, not only big but also small businesses faced severe difficulties.
• e-way bill (to track goods being transported) was postponed to April
2018.
• RCM was suspended and may resume now.
• The tax rate for businesses under the Composition Scheme was
brought down.
• Restaurants were brought under the Composition Scheme with a 5%
tax rate but no ITC.
• Prices have not fallen.
• Services are now taxed higher
• The government’s concern about the misuse of the ITC prompted it to
legislate the anti-profiteering clause. But it is proving hard to
implement; industry is resisting it.
• The tax rate structure (0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%) also adds to the
complexity.
• Then there are different rates for gold and jewellery. Some petrogoods
and alcohol (human consumption) are not a part of the GST.
• Electricity and real estate are also out of the GST.
• The multiplicity of tax rates and exemptions means that the cascading
effect continues.
• India does not have a full GST which is applicable from raw material
to the final good/service.
Hear Arvind Subramanian, scrap the 28% GST rate
• Outgoing chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian says that to
simplify India’s goods and services tax (GST), the 28% tax slab should
go.
• The lower rates should further boost tax buoyancy and lead to much
better tax compliance.
• The fact is that there’s been a huge increase in tax collections, both
of direct (on income and profits) and indirect taxes since the rollout
of GST in the last one year.
• It has widened the tax base and improved transparency in the tax
regime, and subsequent steps by the GST Council have further
reduced GST rates across items.
• The peak GST of 28% is now confined to only about 50 items.
• The two middle rates also need to be fused. The objective needs to
be to have, in effect, three GST rates: zero, a low rate and a standard
rate, which is now the norm for large economies adopting GST, apart
from jewellery.
Important News
• Not all Swiss bank money illegal: govt.
• Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said on Friday that the reported
50% rise in deposits by Indians in Swiss banks could not be
presumed to be a case of black money parked abroad.
• He added that the government would start getting details on
bank accounts of Indians in Switzerland from next year under a
bilateral tax treaty, and strong action would be instituted against
anyone found guilty.
• Five killed in newsroom shooting in Maryland
• Campaigner against rumours lynched
• Mr. Chakraborty, 33, was one of the three people killed in Tripura
in two days following rumours about child-lifting for organ trade
spread through social media.
• Five others, including a constable, have been injured in mob
attacks.
• Woman beaten, stripped in Palam area
• A 45-year-old woman was thrashed and
stripped in south-west Delhi’s Palam on
Wednesday for trying to stop a group of
people from attacking her 65-year-old
landlady.
• Iran not just an energy supplier: Ansari
• Iran ensures overland connectivity between
Eurasia and India and it is not just an energy
supplier, former Vice-President Hamid Ansari
said here on Friday.
• We want best healthcare at the lowest
cost: Modi
• FATF hands 10-point plan to Pak.
• Nasheed exits presidential race after
EC barred him
• IRDA okays LIC-IDBI Bank deal
1. Which country cut off funding for a system that monitored
the flow of greenhouse gases?
• Germany
• Russia
• United States
• North Korea
2. Which was the world’s largest remittance-receiving country
in 2017, as per ‘RemitSCOPE – Remittance markets and
opportunities – Asia and the Pacific’?
• India
• USA
• China
• Japan
Answers-
1. The world’s second oldest rock was discovered in
which country?
A) China
B) India
C) Nepal
D) Sri Lanka
2. Who was conferred with the 11th KISS Humanitarian
Award 2018?
A) Alejandro Toledo
B) Malala Yousafzai
C) Muhammad Yunus
D) Dalai Lama
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