Random thought from India............
Travelling from Palghat to Coimbatore, the long serpentine line of Lorrys waiting at the Sales Tax Check Post in the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border sickened me. The check post is a nerve centre of corruption, hardly brings any revenue to the government and doesnt do a bit to discourage tax evaders. The only thing it does is to delay the transit time of important goods across the country, burns lots and lots of fuel, adds to the cost of logistics which is ultimately passed on to the customer and also creates avoidable traffic snarls. It takes 17 days for a truck to travel from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Imagine this truck carrying apples. What will be the loss due to Apples getting rotten? But who cares? The checkpost postings is a big mafia operation with a Sales Tax employee having to pay at least 20 lakhs rupees to get a 12 month posting in Walayar. This money goes up to the ministers. And the employee has to recover this 'investment' and make a tidy profit in one year. Any wonder this despicable system continues to exist. Why cant we have a uniform sales tax that allows people to transport materials from one part of the country to another? As things stand now, for transportation of goods, it is more like Kerala and Tami Nadu are two different countries, rather than being part of the same Country. What price National Integration! But who cares? The powers that be are more worried about nuclear deal than look at issues that can be solved in a jiffy at the micro level. Many such micro level removal of inefficiencies will result in overall prosperity of the country.
