India should address the problems of tax evasion, corruption

Chennai: Lamenting that hardly anything was being done to address the twin maladies of tax evasion and corruption in the country, VIT University chancellor Dr G. Viswanathan stressed the need to usher in IT reforms making it mandatory for the citizens to pay their taxes.

“Evading income tax is considered a serious offence in several countries like the US and even in China where the jails are filled up with willful defaulters. We may not adopt a similar strategy but nevertheless a vibrant mechanism should be enforced to make people pay the taxes which are revenue for the government,” he said addressing a discussion on Union Budget 2016–17, organised by the VIT University, Vellore, here on Sunday.

Painting a grim picture of the students who are unable to pursue higher education, especially in medicine in India, he said there was huge shortage of medical seats in the country. “We offer only 50,000 medical seats though many seats are available and the MCI rejects 4,000 seats. As a result, the students migrate to China, Russia and even Bangladesh. This situation should change. Policy planners should focus on increasing the medial quota to prevent students from migrating to other countries,” he urged.

CPI National Executive Committee Member C H Venkatachalamtoday called for a separate budget for agriculture to solve the problems of the farmers. Speaking on the occasion, he said the economic reforms have not benefited the poor even after 25 years of the initiation of reforms. The allocation for agriculture sector does not address the problems in agriculture by failing to provide for modernisation of agriculture.

“If the government can write off Rs 2,00,000 crore of corporate loans, why not waive the loans of the farmers? It has done nothing to address the problem posed by bad loans which constituted Rs 8,00,000 crore,” he said.