London

Police have a photograph of Boris Johnson holding a can of a beer at his lockdown birthday party in June 2020, the Mirror has been told.

The Prime Minister is pictured standing next to Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is holding a soft drink, in No10’s Cabinet Room.

Sources said Mr. Johnson appeared to be raising his can of Estrella beer towards the camera in a toast.

The bombshell image was thought to have been taken by Mr. Johnson’s official taxpayer-funded photographer who was documenting the event.

It is thought to be among 300 pictures submitted to the Metropolitan Police as evidence of rule-busting gatherings by senior civil servant Sue Gray.

These are believed to include photos taken at parties and those taken from security-system cameras showing when people entered and exited buildings.

Multiple images taken by the official No 10 photographer, Andrew Parsons, are also believed to have been handed over to Scotland Yard.

Downing Street has admitted staff “gathered briefly” at a surprise birthday celebration organized by Carrie Johnson – but said the PM only stayed 10 minutes.

But at the time social gatherings indoors were still forbidden under lockdown laws as the country emerged from the first wave of the pandemic.

Barrister Adam Wagner, an expert in Covid laws, said: “The legal question for the Prime Minister is whether he participated in the gathering.

“The fact that he was photographed holding a beer strongly suggest he did and therefore committed a criminal offence of the regulations”.

The picture shows the two senior politicians surrounded by No 10 aides in the Cabinet Room but no birthday cake, sources said.

Mrs. Johnson led up top 30 staff in a chorus of happy birthday before tucking into picnic food from M&S, it has been claimed.

Lulu Lytle, the interior designer behind lavish renovations of the Downing Street flat, also briefly attended.

The Chancellor is understood to have attended the event as he turned up for a Covid meeting, but had not been invited in advance.

Mr. Sunak, hotly tipped as next PM, admitted this week that the ‘Partygate’ row had damaged trust in the Government.

Initial reports that Mr. Johnson was “ambushed” with a birthday cake were later denied by his close allies.

Later that evening, the PM and his wife were said to have hosted family friends in their residence upstairs in an apparent further breach of the rules.

Downing Street denied these claims – saying the PM hosted a small number of family members outside instead.

Mr. Parsons, one of three official photographers funded by the taxpayer, is a regular presence in No 10, taking snaps of the PM at some of his most significant moments.

These included the dramatic picture of Mr. Johnson roaring when the exit poll for his historic 2019 election victory was revealed.

Labour ’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “The Downing Street photographer is funded by the taxpayer, and the public have every right to see the photos they pay to have taken, including any of the Prime Minister’s birthday party.

“Following the Met Police investigation, the Sue Gray report must be published in its entirety with all accompanying evidence – photos, videos and testimony.”

A No 10 spokesman admitted: “A group of staff working in No 10 that day gathered briefly in the Cabinet Room after a meeting to wish the Prime Minister a happy birthday.

“He was there for less than ten minutes.”

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Courtesy: Mirror, London

The post Boris Johnson holding can of beer at lockdown birthday party first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Dhaka, Bangladesh: Streets in capital Dhaka now look much quieter than normal after the government re-enforced the nationwide lockdown following an eight-day break to protect people from the coronavirus transmission.

The lockdown restrictions came into force at 8am today (July 23) and will continue till August 5 midnight, unless extended again as announced by the government on Thursday, upping its guard against the devastating Delta variant of Covid-19.

On the first day of the fresh lockdown, the number of vehicles seen in the capital was much lower than any other day during the last week.

Even then, many were seen in the morning returning to Dhaka through different ways as public transports were not operating following the fresh order.

The government’s order for everyone was to stay in their respective areas as offices, courts, garment factories and all other export-oriented industries will remain closed during the period.

Police and army personnel, deployed to enforce the strict restrictions, were seen checking the movement of people and vehicles at different points of the capital in addition to the duties performed by the police.

Until 10 am, some public transports, carrying passengers, were allowed to enter the capital.

A traffic police officer said some of the long-haul buses and vehicles were allowed to enter the capital through some other routes as they were stuck on the roads before entering the capital. “After 10 am, no vehicle was allowed without valid ground,” he said.

He said the government order is to maintain the lockdown strictly and we’re doing that today. Only the vehicles used for emergency services are allowed to move.

Meanwhile, those returning to Dhaka from southern districts were seen entering Dhaka on foot through different entry points of the city.

Most of them were bus passengers who had to get off from the vehicles before entering the city due to the suspension of traffic movement.

Members of law enforcement agencies were seen making them wear masks and maintain health rules as per the order.

On Thursday, State Minister for Public Administration Farhad Hossain told UNB that this lockdown will be stricter than the one imposed last time. Police, paramilitary Bangladesh Border Guard and the Army will keep a strict vigil on the roads, he said.

Earlier, the government eased the lockdown restrictions in the country for eight days due to Eid-ul-Azha that was celebrated on Wednesday.

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Courtesy: Daily Sun, Bangladesh and UNB

The post Lockdown returns, most streets in Dhaka fall silent first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Nazarul Islam

With a total population of 1.39 billion souls, India comprises of nearly 18 percent of today’s global population. The median annual per capita income is $616. The reality is that hundreds of millions of people in India have continued to survive, with a hand to mouth existence.

They work hard and earn a couple of dollars, and eat once they have earned the money. India has little or no social welfare system. For many people, if they don’t work and earn, they don’t eat.

In 2020, India reported 148,738 deaths as a result of Covid-19. That roughly equates to 0.01% of the population. The average death rate in India in 2020 was 7.25 per 1000 of the population.

And, that means over 10 million people died in India in 2020 and only 1.5% were coronavirus deaths…that is assuming that the 148,738 coronavirus deaths reported were actually caused by coronavirus. The WHO guidelines for reporting deaths do not make clear the difference between dying ‘from’ coronavirus, and dying ‘with’ coronavirus.

At the end of March 2020, India’s emotional Prime Minister, Narendra Modi took the drastic action of locking down the Indian economy due to the coronavirus pandemic. Obviously, the government took decisions as to whom they considered an ‘essential worker’ and who was considered ‘non-essential’.

Unlike the official counterparts in the West, the Indian government did not hand out $600 monthly cheques for those that it had determined to be ‘non-essential’ and told to stay at home and not work. And the initial enforcement of the lockdowns was pretty draconian.

Last April I had received a desperate plea from a press worker I had known who happens to live in the slums in Mumbai. He had once shared that the total living area of his home is roughly 20 square meters, where he managed to live with 7 family members.

He had messaged me to say that he was locked down at home with his family and that they had no food and were starving. Could I please send him some money?

The following day he called me, to say:

“Sir, I received your money, but I am not allowed to step outside. I tried once, to buy food but the policemen caught me, and then beat me up with lathi. I still don’t have food for my starving family.”

Moved, I had to intervene and request a friend who had a journalist pass and was considered an ‘essential worker’ to go and buy food and take the food into the slum for him and his family so that they would not starve to death.

Perhaps…they were the lucky ones.

A recent survey, carried out of the urban poor by a company called IDinsight, has revealed a heart breaking story. According to the IDinsight, a market research firm in the social sector in India, the Indians living in slum neighborhoods reported a 72% reduction in income from a very low base. And the percentage of respondents that reported having no work went up from 7.3% in March to 23.6% in May of 2021!

It is a real struggle to understand why the Indian government would shut down large parts of the Indian economy and put potentially hundreds of millions of poor people’s lives at the risk of starvation by locking them in their houses because a tiny fraction of the population has caught a flu virus.

There is little or no data available on the numbers of people who have died from starvation. Although, a study was conducted, two years ago, with findings that over 450,000 children alone has died as a result of malnutrition in 2017. And, thanks to the lockdown, those numbers will only go up.

It is therefore anybody’s guess as to how many of the poor in India have died.

When the dust settles, I would expect that more people will die from starvation in India, than from the coronavirus in the whole world. And there is very little information being collected or reported on it.

The situation on the ground for food distribution in 2021 is reported to be worse than 2020. India’s food distribution system of getting produce from farm to table is highly inefficient at its best. The lockdowns were reported locally to have amplified the inefficiencies in the food supply chain manifold.

The issue of potential starvation could become an even greater issue in 2021 as the lockdowns continue. Without data on starvation, the stories remain anecdotal. I have a serious fear that when the coronavirus hysteria blows over, we will discover in its wake, a colossal human tragedy will evolve, with a new famine or mass starvation in the country.

UN World Food Program has made an official prediction:

The Food Program had projected 135.0 million people around the world were expected to suffer from starvation, as a result of Covid-19 in 2920. However, the UN experts project nearly 260.0 million people are expected to suffer from food shortage in the current year, 2021.

This catastrophic event may go down in history, as the greatest of of human tragedies on our planet.

Nazarul Islam

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

The post The untold story…. first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Nazarul Islam

As I write this piece today, it happens to be the first anniversary of the death of a friend, and the first among those I lost to Covid-19. He was one of the early ones to fall victim, an outlier, a man in his 60s with no comorbidities, most precautions recommended at that time followed, maybe a slip-up while visiting his local bajaar, maybe something else, maybe a mistake by the doctors still learning how to deal with this thing, maybe carelessness at the nursing home. Suddenly, unbelievably, he was gone.

It felt like a horror story: there’s a rogue, man-eating tiger prowling in the jungle outside the village; if we don’t go there just now, especially at dusk or after dark, we should be fine; and then this man is taken in broad daylight while walking on a path in the middle of the village; who knew the jungle had changed shape and extended its boundaries, who knew the tiger was unpredictable about where and when it struck?

We’ve taken our time trying to understand what is prowling amidst us, devouring us one by one and then in groups and then in droves. We are way past the first anniversaries of the most absurd exhortations ever given by a contemporary leader of a modern nation — Thaali bajao! Diya jalao!

Many of us actually had taken time to stand on our balconies and banged thaalis and vessels; many switched off the lights and lit candles or waved their mobile phone torches. At the same time, hundreds of thousands with no thaalis and no balconies, with no candles or battery lights to waste, trekked across the melting asphalt of the highways in the hottest season of the year, migrating from untenable situations to frighteningly uncertain ones.

Across the last twelve months we’ve had laid out before us in detail the stupidities and criminal manipulations of those in power in the face of this crisis. That ledger will need to be opened and examined again and again; reckonings will need to be demanded; answers, responsibility, blame and consequences will need to be certified and settled. But when I walk out of my building and go on to the road, another question rears its head: leave aside the failed political leaders for a moment, what about us, ourselves?

A year ago, around the time of the first lockdowns, when I used to walk out on the same stretch of road, I observed the following: only about 30 per cent of the people wore masks; of these, many wore them below the nose or took them down to speak and kept them hanging around their necks; almost nobody gave signs of having internalized the idea of physical distancing.

Inside buildings and on the roads, the idea of regularly washing hands or sanitizing them was viewed as a humorous eccentricity. From other cities there were similar reports: the moment a lockdown was eased in other cities where people crowded around shopping areas as if everything was back to normal; in Islamabad people had gathered for religious rituals with redoubled gusto; in Kolkata, it was as if they were on a parallel planet, almost no masks and no lockdown.

From the villages, particularly where my ancestors come from, in Bihar, even after the workers from distant cities reached home, the reports were of bemusement — what is this Covid thing? Answer: it’s obviously a city thing, doesn’t concern us so much.

Back in the city, it felt as though for many people the pandemic was a horror movie playing in the adjacent theatre of the multiplex, nothing to do with the film they themselves were watching except that the sound sometimes leaked through the wall.

People from the privileged classes, that is, the ones with access to the latest information, news and research results, the ones who supposedly had the education to process all this, utterly failed to convey critical points to the less fortunate people who worked for them.

As long as some simulacrum of Covid-19 protocol was being followed in the flat or bungalow, no one cared to inform or educate or help the guards downstairs or the errand boys outside the gate or the stall-wallahs on the footpath. At one point I even heard a corporate-type babu stop someone from talking to a guard: “No need to tell them too much might create unnecessary panic”.

Taking into consideration that the neighboring Indian leaders have infantilized the public, it’s an attitude the wealthier strata replicate when dealing with people lower in the economic order. Or perhaps it is this criminal, feudal ‘bad parenting’ that the political leaders take from the wealthy and inflict upon the masses.

On the streets of Karachi, one of the things you see is working-class people or poorer individuals with the attitude that only the moneyed people can afford to protect themselves and that they themselves are in god’s hands. Taking a rare kaali-peeli taxi ride recently, a friend got talking to the cabbie after he asked the driver to pull his mask up over his nose. The cabbie’s first reaction was, “Don’t worry about me, Babu, whatever happens will happen”.

My friend explained that he was concerned about both of them, and that his mask needed to be up for his safety as well. The driver mentioned god again, saying everything was in His hands. To which my friend replied, “Of course, but god also gives you responsibility.

Otherwise, why don’t you cut your brake wires and steering connection and just press the accelerator?” The driver nodded in understanding. While he may have got it, some of the most powerful people in the country haven’t.

One of the most important social failures over the last 14 months is that people with some knowledge and understanding of this unprecedented, mutating threat have been lax or have abdicated the responsibility of communicating what they know to people who do not have access to or the ability to sift through the barrage of often-contradictory information.

This latter section isn’t only to be found among the lower economic strata; it’s there across all classes, among older people, the more superstitious, the head-in-sand ostriches, the stubborn, devil-may-care types.

More than a year after the first lockdown, when I now walk my stretch of road, a few more people are wearing masks, a few more seem to be aware of the need to maintain distance, but passing the snack shop I see the jostling crowd again with the varied masking and non-masking.

Near the fruit-stall there is that same cretin of a man from last year, tall, strapping, his fancy jogging clothes sodden with sweat, pumping post-run breath on to everyone while holding his mask in his hand. Despite the ongoing carnage in Delhi, Lucknow and the towns and villages of the Gangetic plain, there, in the cluster around the chayer dokaan, everything is as if we were in May 2019.

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About the Author

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

The post One year under the swinging blade… first appeared on Sindh Courier.

A healthy diet and ample physical and mental activity can help your child stay fit during lockdowns. Remember, healthy children become healthy adults!

By Nazarul Islam

With schools closed and outdoor activities on hold during the nationwide lockdowns, obesity concerns have been looming large, for adults as well as children. Especially for children, it is a matter of great concern. A study conducted by the University at Buffalo highlights the negative impact of the lockdown on the health of children.

The study points out that bad diet, lesser physical activity, lack of mental engagement and disturbed sleep patterns are said to be a leading cause of obesity among children.

The school eco-system offers a structure and routine around mealtimes, study time, physical activities, which helps regulate sleep time. These factors when impaired, contribute to an increase in associated risk of obesity.

Obesity among children in India is now an epidemic. Around 14.4 million children in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are obese, making us the second country load with obese kids after China. Now with the lockdown, this number is expected to grow even further.

Unfortunately, the excess weight gained during this lockdown may not be easily reversible and might contribute to obesity during adulthood, if healthy behaviors are not re-established soon.

Clear the junk food out of the snack pantry and make cooking meals together a part of your family’s routine. Get rid of fuzzy drinks and other beverages with high calories. If your kid is going to have free access to the kitchen all day, stock it with carrots and apples.

Make better choices for yourself and for your children. Kids are visual learners, if you eat a cake while telling your kids to eat their veggies, it’s not the example they want to follow.

Additionally, parents could also let their kids do chores that help them stay active, such as mopping the floor, gardening, washing, caring for pets, etc. Assign age-appropriate tasks every day to keep them busy. Set a bedtime and stick to it.

Encourage kids to talk about their feelings of stress, and pencil in screen-free family time.

You eat together as a family.

Switch off the TV to avoid distraction from mealtime.

Do not answer calls, a strict rule of no mobile on the meal table should be enforced and practiced.

Ensure that your child eats at least two fruits in a day.

Ensure that your child chooses a health snack over a sweet treat and help them choose an apple over a biscuit and a banana over store-bought chips.

Engage in in-door games with your children.

A healthy diet and ample physical and mental activity can help your child stay fit during this lockdown. These simple measures will go beyond the pandemic to inculcate a healthy culture among children.

Remember, healthy children become healthy adults!

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About the Author

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

The post Children are the future…. first appeared on Sindh Courier.

The naked dance of death has commenced and without much fuss, it is spreading over a larger and a still larger area. Deaths due to poverty far exceed deaths attributable to Covid-19

By Pramod Ranjan  

Like in most parts of the world, life was on a stand-still in India for the past almost one year, courtesy to Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the poor and the middle class are in a miserable state. Crores have lost their jobs and lakhs have faced savage reductions in their income. Amid this crisis, the Indian government presented its annual budget in Parliament on 1 February 2021.

Based on the statistics on global hunger, published by the UN during the lockdown, Oxfam had estimated that by the end of 2020, hunger linked to the lockdown may start claiming the life of six to 12 thousand persons every day. The naked dance of death has commenced and without much fuss, it is spreading over a larger and a still larger area. Deaths due to poverty far exceed deaths attributable to Covid-19.

Dark clouds of famine, described as ‘Covid-19 famine’, are hanging over the world. The United Nation World Food Program (WFP) has been consistently warning about it. It is believed that the impending famine would be one of the worst over the last 100 years and would spell calamity for the poor and the developing countries as also the war zones in the world.

It is apprehended that this famine may lead to India emerging as a new epicenter of hunger. According to a survey conducted in December 2020, more than half of India’s people are eating less in comparison to pre-Covid-19 days. And most of them are Dalits and Adivasis.

What even worse is that India’s intellectual class is totally oblivious to the specter of death haunting the poor! The sickening odour of the rotting dead is not reaching the noses of the Indian media, social media and those in public life. It seems that our centuries-old heritage of social disparity and the economic inequality triggered by the globalization of economy have deepened the social fissures to such an extent that ‘we’ are totally disinterested in what is happening to ‘them’.

And this disinterest is very palpable in India’s budget 2021-22 and the discussions and comments on it in the media.

The budget is focused on recompensing the losses suffered by the economy due to the pandemic. For this, it is proposed to sell off national assets to the capitalists. Media is obsessed with discussing only this aspect of the budget. Some say the decision is proper and necessary and the next logical step in the process of ‘economic reforms’. Others say that the government was out to sell the country.

In her budget speech, the finance minister dwelt in detail on the budgetary provisions to ensure availability of Covid-19 vaccine in the country and the steps to be taken for making India a digital economy. The pros and cons of these moves are also being debated and discussed.

But nobody is asking why the budget does not make even a cursory reference to the lockdown-induced starvation and the famine that is knocking on the door. No one is querying why there is not a single word in the budget speech about the economic inequalities that have triggered this crisis.

A couple of days before the presentation of the budget, Oxfam released a report titled The Inequality Virus. The report says that the coronavirus pandemic has increased inequality in almost every country. The wealth of the 1,000 super-rich of the world has grown by leaps and bounds during the pandemic. The share market did tumble in the initial days of the lockdown, leading to notional losses for the moneybags. But not only did the fortunes of the top-1,000 billionaires of the world reached to their pre-pandemic highs soon but they earned more than what they had earned in the past several years.  It was the exercise to build a digital world that led to this growing concentration of wealth in a few hands. The businesses in the health and the vaccine production sectors made tons of money. According to the Oxfam report, the lockdown period saw a jump of 19 per cent in the wealth of the super-rich. Jeff Bezos, the richest person on the earth, became worth 185.5 billion US dollars. On 18 January 2021, Elon Musk’s total wealth was estimated at 179.2 billion dollars. The net wealth of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, and Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, grew by 15 billion US dollars since March 2020. Eric Yuan, the CEO and founder of Zoom was richer by 2.58 billion dollars during this period.

There were eye-popping changes in the economic scene in India, too. Indian billionaires raked in big moolah during the lockdown. They reaped the benefits of the subsidy schemes announced by the government to give a boost to the economy. Locked up in their homes, the people handed over whatever little they had, to the big industrialists. Currently, India has 119 billionaires, including Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Shiv Nadar, Cyrus Poonawala, Uday Kotak, Azim Premji, Sunil Mittal, Radhakishen Damani, Kumarmanglam Birla and Laxmi Mittal.

During this period, Mukesh Ambani emerged as the richest man in India and Asia. During the pandemic period, he earned an average of Rs.90 crore per hour when 24 per cent of Indians were earning barely Rs.3000 per month.

The cumulative wealth of these 119 super-rich went up by 35 per cent in this period. Together, they earned Rs.13 lakh crore. What this amount means is evident by the fact that if it were to be equally distributed among the 14 crore poorest Indians, each one of them would get Rs.one lakh. The lockdown earnings of Mukesh Ambani could have sufficed to keep the 40 crore persons in the informal sector who lost their jobs during this period, above the poverty line for at least five months.

On the other hand, the lockdown pushed more than 12 crore Indians on the verge of starvation. The middle classes were unable to pay back their bank loans and lakhs of families, sick of harassment at the hands of their creditors, contemplated mass suicide. The government ignored the demand for extension of the moratorium on payment of EMIs. Before the budget, the government had made it clear to the Supreme Court that it was with the creditors. Shrugging off its responsibility, the government told the court that extension of the moratorium would erode the faith of the capitalists who have invested their money in the banks. There were reports of dozens of indebted families committing suicide and lakhs of creditors facing aggressive and abusive behavior and even manhandling at the hands of the recovery agents of the banks and other financial institutions.

The budget is totally silent on this issue.

Deafening silence 

Not only the government but the newspapers are also mum. And this is nothing new. The newspapers have been giving a short-shrift to issues related to economic inequality since the 1990s when India switched to a market-centric economy. Till the year 2000, India had just nine billionaires. By 2017, their numbers had swollen to 101, and as mentioned earlier, now there are 119 such worthies. According to a study, in 2017, the one per cent top-rich held 73 per cent of the country’s national wealth. In 2018-19, the total wealth of these moneybags was more than the country’s annual budget. During the Covid-19 calamity, they not only continued to fill their coffers without a shred of guilt or shame but institutions under their control used the pandemic to blackmail the people.

The 10 per cent Indians at the top of the socio-economic pyramid control 77 per cent of the national wealth, while the remaining 90 per cent have to contend with just 23 per cent.

One very potent way of reducing this inequality could have been imposing wealth tax and making sure that all the concerned pay up. This would have made good the losses due to the lockdown. The super-rich should have been taxed on the basis of their annual income and an additional Cess should have been imposed on them based on their total wealth. Instead, in the name of disinvestment, the government decided to hand over the country’s national wealth to these moneybags. This is akin to worsening the problem instead of resolving it.

New York, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington and many other states in the USA are planning to impose additional taxes on the rich.

A Bill has recently been introduced in the legislature of the Washington State to impose Wealth Tax on the rich to repair the economy ravaged by the lockdown. If this bill is cleared, those owning property worth more than one billion dollars would be required to pay one per cent wealth tax. That would yield an income of 2.5 billion dollars, which would be used for providing financial assistance to the low- and the middle-income households and extending credit facilities to businesses with poor profit margins. It would also be used for education, children’s welfare and for bettering public health, public housing and public security. Like India, Washington, too, had around 100 billionaires of which 13 are super-rich. They include the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and MacKenzie Scott. The Bill has been moved primarily to tax them. Of the revenue expected from the new tax, 97 per cent would come from them. These super-rich earned upwards of 151 billion dollars during the lockdown period (March 2020 – January 21) and their total wealth went up by around 41 per cent. The people of Washington, supporting the decision to impose wealth tax on them, say that the earnings can cover the shortfall of three billion dollars in the state’s budget 50 times over. And despite the tax, the super-rich would continue to be as rich as they were before the pandemic struck. The demand for taxing them has assumed the form of a movement and it is hoped that the bill would be cleared by the legislature soon.

You might remember that some dynamic and sensitive officers of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) had suggested a similar course of action during the initial days of the pandemic. That was the time when lakhs of migrant farmers were trudging to their villages from industrial towns like Delhi, Mumbai and Surat and there were reports that fatigue had claimed the lives of hundreds of them on the way. Amid this came a piece of news that seemed like a whiff of fresh air. Around 50 officers informed on the Twitter Account of the IRS Association that they have prepared a report titled FORCE (Fiscal Options and Response to the Covid-19 epidemic),

The report was a personal effort on the part of the officers, who suggested a course of action for the government. The report said, “In times like these, the so-called “super-rich” have a higher obligation towards ensuring the larger public good.” The officers proposed that income tax rates be raised for the rich and an additional Covid-19 Relief Cess be levied on those earning more than a specified amount. The report said that cases of non-filing of returns, not deducing tax at source, not depositing TDS in government accounts and reducing tax liability by making fake claims of losses keep on cropping up. Thus, it would be appropriate to increase tax rates from 30 to 40 per cent for those with an annual income of more than Rs.one crore and wealth tax or property tax on those whose annual income is more than Rs.5 crore.

These officers were neither Communists nor revolutionaries seeking a fundamental change in the system. They only proposed that some new taxes be imposed temporarily to bring the country’s economy back on the rails and to ensure that the poor and the middle classes have cash in their hands so as to give a boost to trade and commerce.

The super-rich realized that this could be the thin end of the wedge. They were rattled and soon, stories began appearing in the media insinuating that these officers were guilty of gross indiscipline. Articles were carried arguing that such measures would infuriate the rich and promote tax evasion. The government got cracking and three senior IRS officers were penalized by shifting them from their posts. The government said that more than the young officers, it was their seniors who were responsible for this breach of discipline as they had provoked the former to prepare the report. The officers held guilty were Prashant Bhushan, principal commissioner of income tax, Delhi; Prakash Dubey, director DOPT, Delhi and Sanjay Bahadur, principal director, investigation, northeast region.

No one praised the sensitivity of these officers and their dedication to duty. No editorial was written in their support and no TV debates were held. No one raised the question that when these officers had neither criticized the government nor imposed any new tax on their own but had only made some suggestions for consideration by the government, how were they guilty of indiscipline? If any officer had suggested imposition of higher taxes on the poor or the middle classes, would that have been considered an act of indiscipline?

They did not get any support from the media. No civil society organization came out in their support and neither did any caste or religious organization back them. Neither the Communist parties spoke in their favour nor socialists or the pro-social justice Ambedkarites. No one said that these diligent and visionary officers had realized much before the Communist parties, who talk of the proletariat at the drop of hat, and the economists, experts in making all sorts of predictions by juggling figures, that the coming months would witness an increasing concentration of wealth into a few hands.

Be that as it may, the world of which the super-rich dream is a world in which there would be no place for questions. They want a world in which everyone has food to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over his head. But they do not want anyone to question the inequality that informs our world, due to which people are stressed all their lives and no one seems happy. They don’t want to know why some people are dying bit by bit. And why some human communities are disappearing from the face of the earth. If we want to ensure that the world of their dreams doesn’t become a reality, we should continue to ask questions, we should welcome all legitimate questions against them, no matter who raises them. As a beginning, we should try taking the questions raised by the IRS officers to the people.

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About the Author

Pramod Ranjan is an assistant professor in the Rabindranath Tagore School of Language and Culture Studies of the Assam Central University India. He is interested in studying the working of media organizations, philosophy of knowledge and analysis of the ignored aspects of literature, culture and society.  

{Published with permission of the author}

The post Turning deaf ear to death, famine and economic disparity first appeared on Sindh Courier.