Why Do You Knead Our Dough?

Perhaps you'd like to be reminded in what imaginative ways you spend our money? While you talk of downsizing, your own ministry's total workforce saw an increase of 13,198 to 2.35 lakh last year, needing a total pay outgo of Rs 2,524.24 crore. There goes what you earned from service tax (Rs 2,200 crore)! Your predecessor, P. Chidambaram, thinks the Department of Economic Affairs should have only 30 people, compared to 30,214 now. We may be biased—he cut our taxes, remember?—but we think he makes great sense.

Let's lay off your ministry—what about the department of culture? Why does it employ 13,821 people, paying them Rs 100 crore-odd? That's almost what you get as service tax from the entire advertising industry! You also spent a similar amount buying buildings for the Central Board of Direct Taxes and Central Board of Excise and Customs last year, by the way.

There's more. In your ministry, most agree that about nine departments are no longer needed—heavy industry, industrial policy development, chemicals and petrochemicals, food processing, textiles, mines, i&b, civil aviation, culture... That's straightaway a saving of

Rs 5,740 crore in terms of budget outlays. Which gives your entire education plan investment (barring culture)!

Perhaps, Sir, you could change your advisors, commissioners and secretaries? Fill these posts with people working in the private and informal sectors. People who understand the value of saving for old age or for a roof over one's head. There's simply no way your staff, secure in the warm cocoon of hefty pensions, provident fund, free bungalows and official transport, can understand where the shoe pinches. Especially when it's their pensions (Rs 15,059 crore this year, and half of income-tax collections) and perks which are partly to blame for the tax burden. A former bureaucrat yourself, surely you understand that this is grand larceny on a grand scale, a gigantic fraud perpetrated on our citizens?

So could you tell me, Sir, why we should pay taxes?

Yours honestly,
Bharati Devi,
Taxpayer