Looking merely at direct taxes, it is often suggested that India is an under-taxed nation. This, says R. Vaidyanathan, does not take into account the speed money paid for government service. This rent-seeking makes the nation high-taxed.

THERE is a view among some experts that India is an under-taxed economy. Many a time Finance Ministers believe in this and exhort people to pay their dues.

Advertisements are issued to induce people to pay taxes and novel schemes are suggested before every Budget to augment government revenues. One of the common arguments is based on the share of taxes to GDP and it is suggested that it can be much higher. Another is in terms of the composition of the taxes - direct and indirect - and it is suggested that the latter, which are regressive, are larger share of the pool.

Table 1 gives the share of taxes to GDP for select years from 1991. The share of taxes, both direct and indirect, has been around 15 per cent of GDP in the last decade and half. The share of indirect taxes was of the order of 11.5 per cent and that of direct taxes 3.6 per cent.

Based on this data of direct taxes to GDP of nearly 4 per cent, many experts, particularly of the Left persuasion, argue that we are a under-taxed nation from the view of the direct taxes. But, as we will show, they do not take in to account the payment to be made to government employees (variously called bribe, rent seeking, speed money, lubrication, etc.) for carrying on any activity and to that extent the total taxes are much higher than reflected.

Table 2 gives the level and composition of taxes of both Central and State governments in the last decade. A slight shift in the proportion of direct taxes from 1991 to 2003 is seen. It has gone up from 14 per cent of all taxes to nearly 24 per cent during this period when the proportion of the indirect taxes came down from 86 per cent to 76 per cent.

A substantial drop is seen in the Customs duties due to our international commitments. Excise duties declined from 28 per cent to 23 per cent during 1991 to 1996 and by a similar magnitude later. The share of personal income-tax showed an increase from 6.6 per cent to 9.9 per cent. As personal income-taxes and excise duties are shared with State governments, there is no enthusiasm for the Centre to reform them.

The aggregate taxes do not reveal the full picture of evasion and coverage. Table 3 provides the number of returns filed by salaried and non-salaried persons in 1999-2000 according to the I-T Department.

It says that there were no salaried persons earning more than Rs 1 crore annually and in all only 200 persons above Rs 25-lakh. In the case of self-employed, the number is around 900 in the Rs 25-lakh category with none in the Rs 50-100-lakh category.

From Table-3, it looks as if a relief fund should be created for all our top film-stars, cricket players, surgeons, lawyers, chartered accountants, architects, tax consultants and other self-employed persons. They all seem to be in distress!

Table 4 provides the number of returns from some categories of services as published by the I-T Department. The numbers speak volumes about the coverage and the nature of underlying collections.

The whole country there are apparently only 10,539 utensil and 5477 furniture shops in the taxable category. Pinch yourself.

Immediately the argument will be to strengthen, enhance, improve and network the I-T Department. The issue is not that. It is much more serious and cancerous. If you visit the Postal Department officers’ quarters in, say, Mumbai you will find mostly cycles and scooters.

But if you visit the residential quarters of the staff of Direct or Indirect Tax Department, you may find expensive cars parked there. That should provide clues to the issues facing us.

At the same time we find that the income of government employees rising faster than the inflation rate in the last thirty years.

Table 5 provides the increase in salaries of public sector employees in relation to inflation. The emoluments have risen 3610 per cent from 1971-72 to 2000-01 when the Consumer Price Index climbed 1440 per cent. This implies the public sector employees are net gainers with their real income well protected.

Hence decline in the real income cannot be a reason, if at all it is justifiable, for rent seeking from ordinary citizens.

IT CAN BE a smooth and almost pleasurable experience: the salesperson makes an informative and attentive pitch, the product is just what the customer wants, the price seems right and the deal is closed. This waltz of enlightened capitalism can create the kind of good will that led one car salesman’s customers to deliver home-cooked meals to his desk during long shifts.

But the dancing skills of salespeople that consumers encounter at their front door, on the telephone or at the local mall seem to be declining, several experts say.

There are noteworthy exceptions: companies like Nordstrom Inc., for example, that stake their reputations on educating their sales staff to a high standard of service.

But Lawrence Chonko, a professor of marketing at Baylor University’s Center for Professional Selling and Sales Management, estimates that no more than 3 out of 10 salespeople know the basics of their trade. “And the pool is getting diluted,” he said.

There are several explanations. For one, the number of full- and part-time salespeople increased 18 percent over the last decade, to almost 14 million, their ranks swelling with workers seeking new jobs or second incomes but not necessarily the chance to hone selling skills over a long career.

At the same time, businesses have latched onto the virtues of telephone sales as a cheaper alternative to the face-to-face sales call. And retailers have hired more unskilled part-timers to enable their stores to maintain longer hours.

Many of these workers “do not have a long-term interest in developing a relationship with a customer,” said John A. Quelch, a marketing professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. “As a result, the percentage of true professionals has diminished.”

The fallout is expensive for businesses, as loyal customers grow scarce and word-of-mouth advertising drops off. It is troubling to many practitioners of the sales arts, who see sellers and consumers losing an appreciation of the profession’s skills and techniques.

Those techniques can be learned, say some top salespeople, who offered the following curriculum guide. Targeting Customers

Freddye (Action) Jackson never leaves his home in Mitchellville, Md., without his business cards, whether mowing his lawn or running to the store. He promises colleagues that if they catch him without them, he will give them $100.

THE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEEE), Kerala Section, and ‘IEEE GOLD’ (IEEE Graduates Of the Last Decade) are jointly organising a workshop on ‘Pragmatic Project Management’ here on Saturday.

The session, to be held at the Amphitheatre of ER&DCI here from 9.30 a.m., will be handled by Mr Brajesh C., Head, Process Automation Group, NeST, Thiruvananthapuram.

An IEEE spokesman said the workshop aimed to bring the oft-forgotten principles of management back into focus. It will cover a variety of project management techniques, with special emphasis on industry best practices.

The technical talk would mainly cover subjects such as project management principles, project lifecycle, scheduling and costing, the spokesman said.

Desertification seems too Lappalien a problem in the world plagued by terrorism, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflicts, AIDS and other monstrosities, but it can be dangerous to surveillance, given that the phenomenon is rapidly engulfing large part of land across the continent, more than one billion human beings.

June 17 for the last decade, it is recalled that the World Day of fight against desertification by the United Nations. Unfortunately, just the day all the attention is on India faces a serious threat of desertification, according to the UNDP report. The report states that more than 12 per cent of India, which ranges from the arid north-west over a vast area of semi-Punjab in the north-west of Tamil Nadu in the south, in front of the tomb the possibility of desertification.

The problem is, provided that alarming proportions with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warning that a fifth of the world’s population to bear the effects of the spread of desertification their Fang arm across Asia, Africa, America and even parts of southern Europe.

The FAO and other UN agencies estimate that 8000 to 10000 square kilometers of desert each year in Central Asia, alone, engulfing areas formerly cattle grazing and lakes have existed.

A study by the dry Forest Research Institute of India, desertification in Rajasthan, shows that the factors of this phenomenon are climatic conditions, biotic and socio-economic. The factors are high temperatures, low rainfall, high wind speed, overgrazing, intensive farming, forest removal mining and poverty, illiteracy and traditions of the peoples of the region.

Vinod Sahni, a research associate at the AFRI, said: “The main thing is the human being. Rampant deforestation and unsustainable culture models are intensifying attacks against desertification.”

Opinions are divided by the FAO, adding that if global warming to be responsible, the primary responsibility remains with the humanity is the Verwöhn the overexploitation of natural resources.

Nearly two billion hectares of land, a region on the size of Canada and the USA, the world is affected by human-induced land degradation costs about $ 40 billion per year and the impact on a billion people, said UNDP.

In neighbouring countries, China, sand dunes have progressed within 100 km from the capital, Beijing, the Chinese forces to launch massive reforestation measures. The dark page of the problem is that the fight against desertification occurred once, it is almost an irreversible process.

It is high time that the international community devotes its attention to the emergence of a threat, if not addressed, a havoc limit the damage. Because we have only one planet to live.

The Indian software industry has many laurels for the country in the last decade of the 20th century. It was India on the world map as well as software services are concerned and won the Mindshare many policy makers and researchers. Many researchers see it as a consequence of the division of labour that industry and competitiveness in the long term is uncertain. East reinforced by the fact that the industry has only a small share of global market and companies have low productivity. The Indian companies are below the value pyramid. The results of this document raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of Indian software companies.

As far as higher education is concernced, the educational scenario has changed dramatically in India in the last decade. In the debate of an MBA in India versus abroad, as a student currently pursuing my MBA in India, I believe that an Indian MBA scores over an international MBA on several counts.

The main advantage is the cost. An MBA from any good B-school in the US or UK costs anywhere between Rs 25 to 50 lakhs, whereas Indian MBA schools charge ten per cent of the same amount. Secondly, when living abroad, you spend far more than you would in India, and as a result need to work there for at least a few years to recover the amount. This severely hampers your prospect of returning to India after the completion of the degree.

On the other hand, a student from a reputed Indian B-school always has the option to work at either place, since all premier B-schools have a significant amount of foreign placements taking place each year. Also, India is a vibrant economy today and corporates the world over value the pool of talent that exists here. In fact, people opt for positions in India to be a part of the growing economy. Lately there has been an increase in the number of NRIs coming back to India. In this thriving scenario, it makes sense to get your degree from an Indian B-school.

There has also been a steady increase in the number of tie-ups between Indian and foreign universities. Some of them include the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research with Virginia Tech, the Indian School of Business with the Wharton School-Kellogg School of Management, the Management Development Institute with Cambridge College, Great Lake & Yale, Welingkar College with Temple University, the Institute of Management and Technology with Fairleigh Dickinson University, Great Lakes and Yale University. Thus, with more and more premier international education its way to Indian shores, one can experience the benefits a international education and a lesser cost.

Also, Indian MBA courses have been expanding and growing significantly in recent years. MBA graduates from Indian B-schools have proved their mettle in the global working environment and are offered top positions in several organisations. Considering the purchasing power parity, initial expenditure (cost of the programme), initial placements, and growth in salary as inputs in decision, MNCs do not have to think twice before coming to India in search of middle and senior management talent.

Organisations have now recognised this new icon on the corporate horizon, which promises a more effective way to relate with manpower and business. Gone are the days when the role of the personnel man was likened to that of an animal tamer, cracking his whip to make the animal perform a set of stunts and tricks. Today, the role has taken on the mantle of a mentor and the profession has grown now to be aptly called human resource development (HRD).

Today, with the foreign investment and sourcing coming to Indian shores, not to mention the further opening up of the economy and recruitment on the upswing, the corporate czars have realised the importance of harnessing and strengthening one of the most important industry resources, mainly people power. This is where the human resource manager steps in to orchestrate an entire gamut of related functions.

”We are a relationship based company and this is one of our core corporate values,” says TB Patel, who heads the HR portfolio at Jacobs H&G. ”Our focus is on our people and we believe that they are our most treasured resource. People play an important role in the success of an organisation and they have to be groomed, nurtured and respected.” Yes, mission statements have now begun to reflect the industries awakening to its people as important resource other than machines and money.

”HR picked up in the last decade or so,” informs Sanghamitra Bhattacharyya, who teaches at the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA), Chennai. She attributes the reasons for this to increasing job insecurity in the business world and uncertainty following large-scale downsizing and restructuring exercises in organisations.

The HR consultant with Assessment India, Pune, Shekhar Manelkar points out that there is a focus on competencies for traditional HR functions of recognising, recruiting, retaining and developing talent. Managers are more aware of their responsibility to people working with them than they were before.

The senior general manager with Glaxo SmithKlein Pharma, Keith Pinto, believes that today HR is more integrated in business. The tools have developed to a great extent and global practices have reached India, much because of the progress in the telecom sector, due to which one is able to share best practices across the globe.

Management institutes now widely offer Human Resource Development courses both at degree and diploma levels. Many institutes conduct online courses in HRD as well. Admission to the degree courses is through a common entrance test followed by an interview. A Master’s or PhD in Psychology, especial Industrial Psychology, moreover, qualifies one for a senior post in Human Resource Management.

HR professional may work in an organisation, management consultancy and academics as well. There is tremendous scope for consultants as change agents for corporate, trainers, career counsellors, recruiters and headhunters.

Engineering companies prefer their senior staff to handle the HR portfolio.

Technical executives who have worked at site have a greater understanding of human psyche and understand human behaviour better. The HR executive, Voltas Limited, Kaustubh Joshi points out that competency mapping, training need assessment and measurement of training effectiveness is an important part of personnel management.

Another interesting trend is that the administrative and legal aspects are being outsourced while strategy and developmental work is retained within the company. There is a slew of consultants who can contribute to this ideation process.

There is an increased awareness among academics and corporate of the need to use HR as a strategic partner in business, in reality, few organisations are actually being so visionary and proactive. The HR professionals should ensure they have an impact on the business.

They have to stay a stage ahead of others and think faster than line functionaries who are caught up in numbers. ”Equipped with sound strategic thinking, people skills and administration discipline, the HR person is geared to take over the CEO post,” opines Pinto.