The ASSOCHAM in its Paper on `Suggestions for Election Manifestos of Political Parties’, which was jointly released here today by its President, Mr. Sajjan Jindal and Secretary General, Mr. D S Rawat also emphasis for committing a time bound rural development and employment generation programme in election manifestos of political parties.

The Paper further says that agriculture needs to be revamped with extreme commitment of political parties for which their manifestos must promise metamorphic changes.

The surge in government revenues from lower direct taxes in the last 15 years has demonstrated the win-win situation that a low tax regime creates for all stake holders.  The logic of this has to be extended to bring corporate and income tax regime on par with those prevailing in countries with best business environment.

A comprehensive review of the Income Tax Act is needed to make compliance with the tax regime simpler and easily comprehensible for the millions of middle class tax payers and reduce litigation.  Corporates should be offered compromise solutions instead of all the time knocking at court doors for legal interpretations that differ from one authority to another and confuse everybody including the government.

In the next budget, steps should be taken to introduce the General Sales Tax (GST) and smoothen problems in VAT implementation.  The Service Tax has become a massive money spinner for the government and it would be even more so as the economy moves to a higher percentage of its GDP from services and expands.  However, it must be recognized that any further increase in the rate of taxation would dissuade compliance and compel tax avoidance innovations by trade especially at the grass roots level due to the complexity of collection and bureaucratic harassment in remitting it.

Local taxes like the Octroi have become a stopper of economic progress as they impede the smooth carrying of goods across highways and are open ended for corruption at the collection points.  Large number of stoppages for octroi clearance involves waste of running time for lakhs of trucks and cause loss of fuel and other waste.  Most important it causes delay in time to market especially for export goods.  Octroi should be abolished and instead a supplementary tax could be levied at start of journey for each route and the collection shared between the various local bodies.  First and foremost there should be a political will for this purpose. That is why this proposal should be committed in election manifestoes.  Truck owners who include thousands of small and medium enterprises have repeatedly gone on strike over the harassment caused by octroi and other highway problems in transportation of goods that feeds the sinews of the economy.

The political parties should work harder so that ceiling on election expenditure by candidates and parties be removed since election expenses go beyond the prescribed ceilings and corporates, trusts and individuals be encouraged to contribute to ensure transparency.

Political parties should inform Election Commission about contributions they receive with full details of amount exceeding Rs.10,000/- on a regular basis. Central and state governments should create election fund from which registered political parties receive assistance on the basis of agreed formula.

The political parties should strive to ensure that all multi-state rivers be considered as national rivers and their resources be developed on basis of integrated catchment as per plans drawn by National River Water Commission. The Kaveri experience shows that without such a policy, State rivers cannot be converted into national sources.

Another substantially significant point raised by the ASSOCAHAM in its Paper for political parties include a firm commitment to seek consensual approach on national issues especially on terrorism, national integrity, demand for secession, equality between religion, human rights and gender discrimination.

Political parties should realize that the cost of power to the consumer is rising partly due to persistence of theft and inefficiencies at every stage of power use.  Government subsidies to keep the cost constant to the urban consumer and give free power to the rural one only perpetuate inefficiency and theft.  If the situation is not improved through surgical intervention against vested interests, the more power is produced the more would be the basic loss leading to an unacceptable situation soon.

There should be a balance between thermal, hydro and nuclear power.  Now that the Indo-US nuclear deal has opened up the nuclear power generation to foreign capital and enterprise, efforts should be made to raise nuclear generation capacity to at least 40,000 MW by 2020 and 60,000MW by 2025.

Recycling in all materials should be encouraged to come up as a separate and profitable industry.  Tax breaks could be considered for its accelerated growth.  The  energy  policy  should  aim  at  restricting  consumption  of fossil fuels and promote alternate energy sources and energy efficiency as a national programme.  Towards this, the oil pricing for the consumer should be left to regulated market forces with oil price allowed to move within a price band and surpluses in oil regulatory fund build up while import prices are very low should be used to balance deficits when prices cross the band ceiling level.  Pricing oil too low to earn popularity is inconsistent with a policy to discourage fast dwindling fossil fuel usage.

Employment generation programmes like NREG should be continued and strengthened. The shortcomings and gaps in them should be attended to. Government agencies that implement the programme need to be trained in rural management. Government must build a cadre of rural management experts.  ITC has used such business management in rural areas trained people to run its e-chaupal prorgramme.  Offering at least 100 days of employment to at least one member of a family would remove distress in rural areas that lead to hunger deaths.  District administration should be encouraged to be transparent in this matter and not hide hunger deaths as due to malnutrition or disease.

The education cess is bringing over Rs 20,000 crores to the Centre but the condition of primary and middle schools continues to be unacceptable and leads to largescale drop out from schools and poor quality of literacy or both.  Teacher absenteeism is eroding the quality of education in government run primary schools. External monitoring agencies should be employed to check on these shortcomings.