Article - 101 Week 27 Right to Export

Article - 101  Week 27     

Right to Export

We all build stuff - materials and ideas. However, the stuff is of no use to us, unless we are able sell it. When we try to sell it, our Government barges in to steal or stop the sale. It tries all its little tricks in its dirty bag, to tell us what is legal and what is not. Most of what we want to sell comes under 'illegal' and therefore makes us poorer. Over a long period of time, we stop thinking and making less of all those good things we could make, because they were branded 'illegal'  by our Government. For example, if you are a farmer, our Government would prohibit you to sell your wheat or rice to any one you please and force you to sell the produce to the Government Agencies at a pre-determined fixed price. This makes you poorer. Then our Government would prohibit exports from time to time or even steal part of the proceeds as a tax. Such controls drive the prices down and makes the farmer poorer. So what is left as 'legal'  to sell is limited in depth, scope and range. Even within this narrow window of legalized sale, our Government throws stupendous amount of  hurdles to block you. If you try to sell something to someone in some other country, you are in big trouble. There is a big negative list, restricted list, and licensed list and so on. You need to have a whole lot of licenses, NOCs, certificates, registration numbers, controls, and complex documentations. Not to forget the high cost of handling of your cargo in the port or the airport, because your government manages them with utter inefficiency, waste and high profiteering. Your government also arbitrarily extracts huge rent from the carriers who visit your port or airport to carry your cargo. Does this not look like a big mountain to climb just to be able to sell your so-called legitimate produce across the border? Huge cost escalations, huge delays, huge rent collections, and huge compliances for a few Rupees that ultimately stands the test of the ultimate sacred fire of the Income Tax department.

The name for removing such arbitrary and debilitating hurdles - a minute installment at a time or throwing a freebie like a much hyped subsidy - is euphemistically known as 'Liberalization of Policies'. It's a cruel joke that we innocently endorse such hurdles by repeatedly voting wrong governments and wrong ideas. We have learnt to live without our freedom for millenniums. Our concept of freedom and liberty is perverted. We vote government after government that sadistically injures the people who produce or create and reward those who do not. So we have more losers and less winners in our society. The majority are losers and they vote the government or the ideas. This is no rocket science. Liberalization has always come under extreme compulsion of the government rather than a well thought out choice for the good of the people at large. The Government needs to be in a desperate financial problem, to allow liberalization. This time it's going to be a big ticket crisis on capital account deficit and a fiscal black hole. And it is our turn to shout and panic like hell. The Government would liberalize. Thanks to a frenzied press, an angry electorate & a few loud Rating Agencies,  to help us in this process of forcing Liberalization on exports.

Brgds

Capt Rath