New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said his government is transforming the country’s health infrastructure that is fit for “New India”.

Speaking after inaugurating five projects worth Rs 1,700 crore at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung Hospital, Modi said: The government is building a suitable health infrastructure across the country for a New India that will have quality and adequate hospitals, more beds, better facilities and best doctors.” 

“The health sector in the country has got a new direction with major policy interventions by the government in the last four years. The Centre with the help of states is putting up an advanced health infrastructure in the country including in tier 2 and tier 3 cities,” he said.

The Prime Minister said his government wants to provide quality healthcare to the citizens at lowest possible cost as the burden of disease is the major cause of poverty. For this, his government has initiated more AIIMS-like hospitals in the last four years than done in the last 70 years, he said.

“Thirteen new AIIMS have been announced in the last four year, of which work has started on eight of them. Apart from this, construction of super-specialty hospitals at 15 medical colleges across the country is underway,” he said. 

“New avenues for medical education are being introduced. Our government is upgrading hospitals as medical colleges in 58 districts. In this budget, the government announced setting up of 24 new medical colleges. We aim to have at least one medical college in three Lok Sabha seats.”

The Prime Minister said about 25,000 new under-graduate and graduate seats have been added in medical colleges in the last four years.

Earlier, Modi laid the foundation stone for National Centre for Ageing, and inaugurated the underground tunnel between AIIMS and Trauma Centre and Power Grid Vishram Sadan at AIIMS. He also inaugurated new emergency and super-specialty blocks at Safdarjung Hospital.

“Facilities at Safdarjung Hospital have been made more advanced with an investment of over Rs 1,300 crore. A super-specialty block and an emergency block have been dedicated to the nation. Safdarjung Hospital has become the country’s biggest emergency care hospital with 500-bed capacity just for medical emergency,” he said.

The National Centre for Ageing will provide state of art clinical care to the elderly population and play a key role in guiding research in geriatric medicine and related specialties. The Centre will provide multi-specialty healthcare, will have 200 general ward beds and will be developed at a cost of Rs 330 crore by February 2020.

The 997-meter tunnel, to be built at a cost of Rs 44 crore to connect AIIMS and Jai Prakash Narayan Apex (JPNA) Trauma Centre, will significantly reduce the commute time.

The Power Grid Vishram Sadan, built at a cost of Rs 32.67 crore, has a 300-bedded night shelter facility meant for the patients and their relatives visiting AIIMS and Trauma Centre at a nominal cost. The 11-floor facility with a helipad on the roof for heli-ambulances is funded by the state-run Power Grid Corporation.

Film: “Sanju”; Director: Raj Kumar Hirani; Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Vicky Kaushal, Paresh Rawal, Dia Mirza, Manisha Koirala, Anushka Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Boman Irani, Anjan Shrivastav; Rating: ****

Actor Sanjay Dutt’s life may have been an open book, yet Director Raj Kumar Hirani’s “Sanju” gives you a peek into Sanjay Dutt’s life with an honesty that instantly touches your heart. Sans any gimmicks, Hindi film tropes and unnecessary drama, Hirani lays bare the actor’s life, recounting each milestone of his turbulent and tumultuous life.

The length of the film here – 161 minutes, is not a deterrent, as Hirani manages to keep you hooked, divulging details about Sanjay Dutt’s life, which one may have known, but are brought to life through the sincere and effortless portrayal by Ranbir Kapoor, who essays the character of Sanju with panache.

Whether it is his craving for drugs, breaking down upon learning about his mother’s illness or being denied giving a speech owing to his “terrorist’ connections, there is complete sincerity in his emotions which strike a chord with the audience.

It is no denying that Raj Kumar Hirani is an auteur with a flair for storytelling, He effectively manages to keep the audience engrossed with the simple narrative, which is a journey of emotional upheavals, shocking revelations and tender moments.

The dialogues by Hirani himself and Abhijat Joshi are straightforward, colloquial, yet laced with humour. The songs too mesh perfectly with the narrative and nothing seems out of place.

Ranbir Kapoor shines all the way as Sanju and not only does his physical demeanour resemble that of Sanjay Dutt’s, but he slips into his psyche too and becomes an extension of Dutt, making you see Dutt’s life on screen.

Matching him in histrionics is Vicky Kaushal, an equally talented actor, who is effortlessly convincing as Sanjay’s friend Kamlesh Kanaiyalal Kapasi aka Kamli. He is endearing, as he steals your heart with his simplicity and unabashed affection for Sanju. Their on-screen bond is palpable.

Manisha Koirala as Nargis Dutt is genuine, while Dia Mirza as Sanjay Dutt’s Wife Manyata, is restrained and charming. Anushka Sharma as the renowned author Winnie Diaz fails to leave an impact, but Paresh Rawal as Sunil Dutt renders a heartfelt performance except for his diction that gives him away. Sonam Kapoor, as his love interest Ruby is effective and Boman Irani, as the quintessential Parsi father, is a delight to watch.

In cameo roles, Jim Sarb as Zubin Mistry, the drug peddler whom Sanjay Dutt refers to as “God” and Anjan Shrivastav in a one scene role as a prominent political figure, are brilliant.

On the technical front the film is mounted with ace production values. The production designs, the camerawork, editing and sound, are expectedly top notch.

The script steers clear from Sanjay Dutt’s personal life and romantic liaisons, but does in no way appear lopsided, as those do not seem intrinsic to the film’s focus.

Overall, ‘Sanju’ with a special emphasis on the father-son relationship, as well as his bond with his friend Kamli, is a heart-warming tale, honestly told.

(IANS Review)

Geneva : A novel formulation of drug carbetocin could be safe and effective in preventing excessive bleeding following childbirth and can save thousands of women’s lives, showed results of a clinical trial by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 10 countries, including India.

Currently, the WHO recommends oxytocin as the first-choice drug for preventing excessive bleeding after childbirth. 

Oxytocin, however, must be stored and transported at 2-8 degrees Celsius, which is hard to do in many countries, depriving many women of access to this lifesaving drug. If it gets exposed to heat, the drug becomes less effective.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that heat-stable formulation of carbetocin can be as safe as oxytocin in preventing post-partum haemorrhage. 

This new formulation of carbetocin does not require refrigeration and retains its efficacy for at least 3 years stored at 30 degrees celsius and 75 per cent relative humidity. 

“This is a truly encouraging new development that can revolutionize our ability to keep mothers and babies alive,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO.

Approximately 70,000 women die every year because of post-partum haemorrhage, increasing the risk of their babies also dying within a month.

For the trial, the team studied close to 30,000 women who gave birth vaginally in 10 countries: India, Argentina, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda and the UK.

Each woman was randomly given a single injection of either heat-stable carbetocin or oxytocin immediately following the birth of her baby. 

The study found that both drugs were equally effective at preventing excessive bleeding after birth, but oxytocin tend to degrade in higher temperatures, whereas heat-stable carbetocin had no effect of high temperature.

“This is an important step forwards in postpartum haemorrhage prevention and these results pave the way for heat-stable carbetocin to potentially save the lives of thousands of women, especially in areas where cold-chain transport and storage is not feasible,” said Professor Klaus Dugi, Chief Medical Officer, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a Switzerland-based company that developed the drug.

The next step is regulatory review and approval by countries, the WHO said.

A UN body has that children in India continued to be affected by incidents of violence between armed groups and the Government, particularly in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and during tensions in Jammu and Kashmir.

In its annual report, on “Children and Armed Conflict,’’ the UN has said that the United Nations continued to receive reports of the recruitment and use of children, including by the Naxalites, particularly in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Naxalites reportedly resorted to the use of a lottery system to conscript children in Jharkhand.

In addition, three incidents of the recruitment and use of children were reported in Jammu and Kashmir in the context of clashes with national security forces. One case was attributed to Jaish-i-Mohammed and two to Hizbul Mujahideen. Unverified reports also indicate the use of children as informants and spies by national security forces.

Children continued to be killed and injured in the context of operations of national security forces against armed groups. According to Government data, 188 civilians were killed in Naxalite-affected regions, although no disaggregated data on children were available. On 9 March, a 15-year-old boy was killed by national security forces during a clash with alleged Lashkar-e-Tayyiba elements in Padgampora village, Pulwama district.

In Jharkhand State, suspected Naxalites elements attacked one school in Khunti district, partially destroying it. With regard to military use, the occupation of over 20 schools was documented by the Central Reserve Police Force in Srinagar, Kashmir, in April. Increased tensions in Jammu and Kashmir reportedly also led to school closures for varying periods, including in Rajouri (65) and Poonch (76) districts.

“I welcome the Government’s signature of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) in June 2017, and encourage the Government to put in place measures to hold perpetrators of child recruitment and use to account and engage with the United Nations in view of ending and preventing violations against children, ‘’ the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Ms. Virginia Gamba, said.

Globally, the number of children affected by armed conflict and the severity of grave violations affecting them increased in the past year, concludes the annual report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict released on 27 June 2018.

“The report details the unspeakable violence children have been faced with, and shows how in too many conflict situations, parties to conflict have an utter disregard for any measures that could contribute to shielding the most vulnerable from the impact of war,” the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Ms. Virginia Gamba, said.

Over 21,000 grave violations of children’s rights have been verified by the United Nations from January to December 2017, an unacceptable increase from previous years (15,500 in 2016).

The crises unfolding in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen brought about serious increases in verified grave violations. In Syria, children have suffered the highest number of verified violations ever recorded in the country. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, crises in the Kasais led to an eightfold increase of attacks on schools and hospitals (515). In a despicable trend, almost half of the 881 verified child casualties in Nigeria resulted from suicide attacks, including the use of children as human bombs.

Over 10,000 children were killed or maimed in 2017 with numbers growing substantially in Iraq and Myanmar, while remaining unacceptably high in Afghanistan and Syria.

“When your own house or your school can be attacked without qualms, when traditional safe-havens become targets, how can boys and girls escape the brutality of war?” SRSG Gamba asked. “This shows a blatant disregard for international law by parties to conflict, making civilians, especially children, increasingly vulnerable to violence, use and abuse,” she added.

In South Sudan, violence against children continued unabated with 1,221 children verified recruited and used. Rape and other forms of sexual violence against children remained disturbingly high with over 900 verified cases against boys and girls.

The number of children detained for their alleged association with armed groups remained extremely worrisome. For instance, in Iraq, at least 1,036 children were held in juvenile detention facilities on national security-related charges, mostly for their alleged association with ISIL. In Nigeria, over 1,900 children were deprived of liberty because of their or their parents’ alleged association with Boko Haram.

In the report, the Secretary-General reminded the authorities that children formerly associated with armed groups should be treated primarily as victims and detention only used as a last resort. 

Large scale abductions of children remained another worrying trend. In Somalia, Al-Shabab abducted over 1,600 children, many of which were also victims of recruitment and use or sexual violence. Massive cross-border recruitment by actors such as ISIL and Boko Haram was also documented as a continuous trend requiring concerted regional efforts.

Another disturbing trend was the denial of humanitarian access used as a tactic of war. Children in Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen were prevented from receiving life-saving support. In Syria, 400,000 persons, including children, trapped in besieged areas such as Ghutah and Rural Damascus, faced deteriorating living conditions. 

The number of unaccompanied children fleeing wars and violence also underlines the importance of a coordinated international response, including with regional and sub-regional actors, to multiply child-protection efforts and address the cross-border dimension of grave violations. Continuing cross-border recruitment and use by actors such as ISIL and Boko Haram was also documented as a continuous trend requiring concerted regional efforts.

Over 10,000 children were formally released from armed groups and forces to commence their reintegration process.

In Sudan, the Government Forces have been delisted for the recruitment and use of children following the completion of their Action Plan with the UN. In Colombia, as part of the peace process, the FARC-EP put in place measures to release children and prevent their recruitment and has been delisted. The signature of a new Action plan with the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) in Nigeria (September 2017) and with the Mouvement Patriotique pour la Centrafrique (MPC)in CAR (June 2018) is bringing the groups closer to stopping and preventing grave violations against children. Several armed groups, including in Myanmar and CAR, have also expressed their readiness to sign Action Plans with the UN.

Mumbai : Actor Sanjay Dutt says spending days in prison broke his ego, but made him a better person.

“My confinement days have been nothing less than a roller coaster ride. To look at the positive side, it has taught me a lot and made me a better individual,” Sanjay Dutt.

“Staying away from my family and my loved ones was a challenge. During those days, I learnt how to keep my body in perfect shape, used trash cans and mud pots in place of weights and dumbbells. We also used to have a cultural function every six months in jail where I taught convicts serving out life sentences to mouth dialogues, sing, dance and express themselves through skits. 

“These people became my family during the hard times and came to encourage me when I was giving up,” he added. 

Sanjay, who had made a rocking debut in Bollywood with “Rocky” in 1981, put his personal life in jeopardy through drug addiction, and his life took a turn for the worse when he was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and was convicted.

The actor, 58, was arrested for illegal possession of arms in a case related to the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, in which over 250 people were killed and several hundred were injured. 

Sanjay’s fans will get to see a glimpse of his life with Rajkumar Hirani’s film “Sanju”, in which Ranbir Kapoor will be seen living his life. A particular scene in the trailer had in fact shown Ranbir in a helpless state due to an overflowing toilet in jail. The scene has reportedly been deleted from the film.

A father of three, Sanjay says the court battle definitely transformed him as a person.

“The time I spent in jail made me realise a lot of things. It broke my ego,” Sanjay said.

It was in February 2016 that Sanjay walked out of jail completing his prison-term for illegal possession of arms.

Recounting the moment, he said: “The day I was released after the final verdict, it was the happiest moment of my life. I was missing my father (Sunil Dutt). I wish he was alive to see me free… he would have been the happiest person. We should never forget our family, they are the pillar of strength always.”

Jammu : Hours after bad weather along both north and south Kashmir routes on Thursday halted the Amarnath Yatra, it resumed following improvement in weather around afternoon.

Authorities allowed pilgrims to move towards the Cave Shrine from north Kashmir’s Baltal base camp although the Yatra continued to remain suspended from Pahalgam base camp in the south.

Earlier an official said: “It has been raining along both Baltal and Pahalgam treks to the Cave Shrine since early morning. All the pilgrims are safe. They have been advised not to proceed till the weather improves.” 

The Amarnath Yatra was officially started early on Thursday, after batches of pilgrims started their progress to the camps on Wednesday.

The MeT has forecast rain and thundershowers in the valley for the next 48 hours till Saturday.

A total of 3,425 pilgrims left Bhagwati Nagar Yatri Niwas in Jammu in two batches at 3.55 a.m. and 4.20 a.m. amid tight security for the two base camps.

Thursday’s batch included 2,679 males, 592 females, three children and 151 Sadhus, the police said.

The 60-day long Amarnath Yatra will end on August 26, coinciding with the Shravan Purnima festival.

Stressing on the security arrangements made for the Amarnath Yatra, Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra on Thursday urged the pilgrims to have faith in the armed forces.

Vohra, who is also the chairman of Shri Amarnath Ji Shrine Board (SASB), told the pilgrims that they should have confidence in the security forces.

“There won’t be any difficulty in the yatra,” Vohra said. 

In 2017, eight pilgrims were killed and 13 others injured in the attack on an Amarnath yatris bus.

The Congress on Thursday accused the Modi government of using the 2016 surgical strike carried out in Pakistan as “political fodder” to gain votes and listed many similar strikes done in the last two decades to assert this was not the first action of its kind.

Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala’s comments came a day after the release of the video footage of the Indian Army’s surgical strikes in September 2016 when troops crossed the Line of Control (LoC) to attack terror hubs in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Surjewala told reporters that BJP President Amit Shah had “dishonoured” the 70-year-long history of bravery and sacrifice of the armed forces by making a “disgraceful statement” on October 7, 2016 that the “Indian Army had crossed the LoC for the first time in 68 years”.

Stressing that Congress President Rahul Gandhi and her predecessor Sonia Gandhi supported the armed forces and the government in the 2016 action, Surjewala said the Army had conducted strategic surgical strikes “with utmost precision and effective penetration” at different times in the last two decades.

He listed eight “surgical strikes” conducted prior to 2016. 

“We are proud that our forces successfully conducted multiple surgical strikes over the last two decades, particularly post 2000 — January 21, 2000 (Nadala Enclave, across Neelam river); September 18, 2003 (Baroh Sector, Poonch); June 19, 2008 (Bhattal Sector, Poonch); August 30 to September 1, 2011 (Sharda Sector, across Neelam river Valley in Kel); January 6, 2013 (Sawan Patra Checkpost); July 27 to 28, 2013 (Nazapir Sector); August 6, 2013 (Neelam Valley); January 14, 2014; September 28 to 29, 2016.”

He said the Modi government sought credit for the sacrifices of the soldiers but had “utterly failed” to provide the direction, vision and policy for dealing with Pakistan and checkmating Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. 

“No wonder the apathy and incapacity of the Modi government has resulted in the sacrifice of 146 soldiers, more than 1,600 ceasefire violations by Pakistan and 79 terrorist attacks post September 2016,” Surjewala said.

“Doublespeak of the Modi government and the BJP’s stand is reflected in the stepmotherly treatment of our armed forces, both in terms of providing for security apparatus as also in slashing their budgetary allocation.” 

Surjewala alleged that Army Vice Chief Sarath Chand was “forced” to say that 68 per cent of all equipment was vintage. 

“On account of budgetary cuts, procurement from ordinance factory is being reduced from 94 per cent to 50 per cent, which will force our soldiers to buy uniforms, combat dress, belts and shoes on their own.” 

Surjewala said the report of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence highlighted lack of money for emergency purchases by Armed Forces after the Uri terror attack, the surgical strike and the Doklam standoff with China.

Five people were killed and two others injured when a man armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades stormed into the newsroom of a community newspaper chain in the US state of Maryland, prompting law enforcement agencies to provide protection at the headquarters of all American media organisations.

The suspect, identified as Jarrod W. Ramos, 38, was taken into custody after the targeted attack on Thursday at the office of the Capital Gazette located in Annapolis, reports The New York Times. 

The attack has been deemed as the deadliest day for journalism in America in several years.

Ramos had a long history of conflict with the daily, which produces a number of local newspapers along Maryland’s shore.

He lost a defamation case against the paper in 2015 over a 2011 column he contended defamed him. The column provided an account of Ramos’s guilty plea to criminal harassment of a woman over social media.

“This person was prepared today to come in, this person was prepared to shoot people,” The Washington Post quoted Anne Arundel County Deputy Police Chief William Krampf said. 

“His intent was to cause harm.”

The police said all of the victims killed were Capital Gazette employees: Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters. 

Fischman and Hiaasen were editors, McNamara was a reporter, Smith was a sales assistant and Winters worked for special publications, according to the newspaper’s website.

Four of the victims died on the spot while the fifth was pronounced dead at the University of Maryland Medical Centre.

The shooting began at about 3 p.m. in the office building just outside downtown Annapolis, The Washington Post reported.

Ramos entered the building with a shotgun and looked for his victims, the police said. 

The police, who arrived at the scene within a minute of the reported gunfire, apprehended Ramos found hiding under a desk in the newsroom.

Gazette reporter Phil Davis described the scene as a “war zone” and a situation that would be “hard to describe for a while”.

After his arrest, Ramos refused to cooperate with the authorities or provide his name. He was identified using facial recognition technology, a law enforcement official told The New York Times.

President Donald Trump tweeted: “My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” CNN reported. 

House Speaker Paul Ryan said: “The senseless attack on a Maryland newspaper today is sickening. God bless these journalists. We pray for them and their families tonight.”

Joel Simon, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that violence against journalists was unacceptable. 

“Newspapers like the Gazette do vital work, and our thoughts are with them amid this unconscionable tragedy,” he added.

The Capital Gazette, which has an editorial staff of 31 people, had a daily circulation of about 29,000 and a Sunday circulation of 34,000 as of 2014.

Commonly referred to as the Capital, the paper was founded in 1884 as the Evening Gazette.

The paper promotes itself as one of the oldest publishers in the country, with roots dating to the Maryland Gazette in 1727.

Virtually setting the party’s campaign agenda for next year’s general election in West Bengal, BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday launched an all-out attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress, and claimed his party would win more than 22 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

The Trinamool rubbished his charges and claims.

Shah charged the Mamata Banerjee government with resorting to massive violence and atrocities against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers, and said people would oust it from power in the near future.

Claiming his party has made massive inroads in West Bengal over the past four years, he said at a public meeting here that the saffron outfit would become the “number one” political force in the state by winning more than 22 Lok Sabha seats.

“BJP was in fourth position in West Bengal in the 2014 elections and now it has successfully emerged as the second largest party. In the 2019 elections, BJP will become the number one party in Bengal by winning more than 22 Lok Sabha seats,” Shah said.

He raised the number to 23 after people at the meeting responded with a big “yes” when Shah asked whether BJP would win the Purulia seat.

Referring to the recent rural polls in the state, the BJP chief claimed more than 20 of their activists were killed during the election process and claimed the party will not let the bloodshed of its workers go in vein.

Shah said his party’s new government in Tripura has stopped infiltration from Bangladesh, and urged people of Bengal to elect BJP at the state’s helm to achieve the same.

Accusing Trinamool and Banerjee of failure to curb infiltration, cross border smuggling of drugs and for rise of ‘Syndicate raj’ in Bengal, he said: “Tell me friends can the Mamata government stop the Bangladeshi infiltrators from entering West Bengal? 

“Tell me if they be stopped or not? If you people want to stop the infiltration, uproot this Trinamool Congress government and bring in the BJP government here. Only then the Bangladeshis can be stopped from entering Bengal.” 

Shah also took a swipe at Banerjee for her initiatives in forming an anti-BJP alliance in the country ahead of 2019 general elections and said she should instead focus on saving Bengal as land has started slipping from beneath her feet.

“Now, Mamata Banerjee is trying to cobble up a grand alliance. She is trying to bring together people across the country. I want to tell her, Mamata di, surely you can try to build a grand alliance, we also want a good and open election. We have no problem with the grand alliance.

“But first try to save your party in Bengal. The ground is slipping from under your feet,” Shah said with a mocking smile.

Soon after Shah’s speech, Trinamool went all guns blazing to counter him. Banerjee herself kept mum, but fielded heavyweight ministers to respond to the BJP chief.

Dismissing Shah as an “empty vessel that sounds much”, Trinamool Secretary General and state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said: “People would give him a ‘befitting reply’ for trying to foment lawlessness in West Bengal”.

Going a step further, state Finance Minister Amit Mitra called BJP a “terrorist type of organisation”, and accused it of establishing a “neo emergency” in various parts of the state.

“He is a rioter leader. He has taken part in a riots,” said Mitra about Shah.

“The way Amit Shah is trying to foment lawlessness in Bengal, people will respond in 2019. BJP will be thrown out of power at the centre,” said Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim.

Touted as the biggest economic reform since Independence, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was supposed to replace the complex indirect tax system prevalent in the country with a more simplified, uniform regime.

As its roll-out completes one year on June 30, it can be argued that while India has come a long way from a complicated taxation system, with over a dozen different taxes and many more cesses, GST is still far away from an ideal taxation regime.

Also, the one year journey of the GST has not been a smooth one either with glitches and teething problems experienced from day one. While many of those glitches were addressed by a proactive government, some still remain to be resolved including simplification of return filing and further rationalisation of tax rates.

According to NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar: “GST has put the economy on a completely different paradigm now because more and more pressure will be on people to register under GST and bring their economic activity into the formal sector.”

It is not enough only to analyse the one year journey, but it is important to understand the future roadmap.

While many economist would argue that an ideal GST structure should have a universal coverage and a single tax rate, most would also agree that it was not practical for a country like India with vast economic disparities. This is a stand the government has also maintained often giving the example that “a BMW car and a Hawai ‘chappal’ (flip-flops) can’t be taxed at the same rate”.

However, having six different rates — 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent apart from some items being taxed at zero per cent and gold at 3 per cent — makes India’s GST one of the most complex in the world, something acknowledged by the World Bank in its biannual India Development Update report.

“To make things worse, petroleum products, power and real estate have been kept outside the GST ambit,” the report noted.

It added that not only India has one of the largest number of tax slabs, but at 28 per cent, it has the highest standard GST rate in Asia and the second highest in the world after Chile.

Soon after the new indirect tax system was rolled out, NITI Aayog Member Bibek Debroy — who is now also the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council — had told TIS that “India is a long way off from the ideal GST structure and it may not get there anytime in the near future”.

Favouring a maximum of three GST rates with all items covered, Debroy had said that starting with seven rates, “depending on how you count it”, has put India in a situation where it may not get to the ideal GST.

Fast forward to present. The economy is still grappling with the rather high multiplicity of tax rates while also debating bringing petroleum products, electricity and other items into the GST net with little clarity in the picture.

While there has been expression of intent by the government to merge some of the tax slabs, there has been little progress on that front so far.

Right from the first day of the roll-out on July 1 last year, there were technical glitches appearing on the GST Network portal causing a lot of hardship to taxpayers in registering on the network. There were often instances of the portal not being able to take the load of last-minute rush to file returns, forcing the government to postpone the filing deadlines several times.

The glitches also led to export refunds piling up, resulting in a grave situation of cash crunch for exporters, whose working capital was getting blocked.

However, to address this, the government initiated two special fortnight-long drives (extended by a few days later) to process pending refunds — one in March and another in June — clearing a major portion of the backlog while some still remains.

To address the GST network issues, the GST Council has set up a five-member ministerial panel headed by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi to oversee its functioning and smoothen the process.

“GST is a very huge and complex exercise and one has to be honest that it could be implemented better and the details could have been (better) thought through,” the NITI Aayog’s Kumar told TIS.

While there was consensus that no reform could be undertaken without some glitches and teething problems, which could be addressed as we go along, one major concern was that GST might lead to some loss of revenue, especially for the states.

This fear almost came true when GST collections fell for two consecutive months from over Rs 92,000 crore (later revised to Rs 95,132 crore) in September to Rs 83,346 crore (later revised to Rs 85,931 crore) in October, and Rs 80,808 crore (later revised to Rs 83,716 crore) in November.

This prompted the GST Council in its December meeting to prematurely roll out the e-way bill mechanism for inter-state movement of goods from February 1 to plug gaps and check tax evasion.

The e-way bill portal crashed on Day One prompting the government to extend the trial period and eventually postponing the roll-out to April 1.

According to the NITI Aayog Vice Chairman, in a country like India, which is proud of its IT sector, there is hardly any excuse for the IT systems not to work.

However, when the system was rolled out the second time on April 1, the technical issues were sorted out and infrastructure boosted enough for a smooth implementation. The revenue collections also picked up subsequently crossing the Rs 1 lakh crore mark in March (collected in April) — which was, however, attributed to the financial year-end effect — and then again showing credible buoyancy in April when it crossed the Rs 94,000 crore.

Kumar said now that the GST has stabilised, it would give a massive fillip to economic activity.

Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said earlier this week that GST had now entered a “smooth phase” with good tax compliance. He added the priority of the government would now be simplification of tax return forms.

Deloitte India Partner Prashant Deshpande said while GST has resolved the issues of multiple taxable events and double taxation, there are some concerns which still need to be addressed.

“On the legislation side, GST can be improved by extending it to petroleum products, electricity, land and building which are currently taxed under old laws… The number of tiers in tax rate structure are required to be reduced to resolve classification issues,” Deshpande told TIS.

On the execution side, he added, prime concern is the GST compliance infrastructure “which is complex and cumbersome” which needs to be replaced with “a simple and robust compliance system”. 

It would a while before such a system comes into effect.