Katharsis

The constitution of India calls India an indestructible union of destructible states. The new Goods and Services Tax (GST) strengthens this notion of an indestructible union. The GST is a destination based indirect tax inserted in concurrent list of Schedule 7 in the constitution that will replace multiple cascading indirect taxes applied by the center and the states. It has been added in Article 246A through 101 st constitutional amendment act. The GST will subsume central taxes such as central excise duty, service tax, central surcharges and cesses and state taxes such as state sales tax, state VAT, luxury tax, entry tax, entertainment and amusement tax, taxes on lotteries, gambling and betting and state surcharges and cesses. The revenue of the tax would go to the state where the good originates. The GST council has come out with a multi-tiered tax structure – 0% on products on consumer price basket including foodgrains, 5% on items of mass consumption like spices and mustard...

The globalization debate has been raging ever since it formally began in the mid-20 th century with the opening of institutions like World Bank and IMF. In technical sense, India opened up to Globalization much later in 1991 when it was felt important to liberalize market norms and allow privatization to encourage growth of its long stagnant economy. Historically however, India has long preached ideals of Vasudhev Kutumbhkam and Sarve Bhavantu Sukhina, carving out the Indian model of globalization . Last year, India marked the silver jubilee of this venture explained by concepts like global village (Marshall McLuhan) for borderless world (Kenichi Ohame) and compression in terms of time and space (Anthony Giddens). When thinking the impact of globalization, it becomes important to mark at the outset that it has affected different countries differently. The impact of globalization has divided scholars across the world into its defenders and critics. While Marxists criticize it a...

India is a budding country of millions of youth with soaring aspirations and beckoning futures. It becomes but necessary for the socialist country which they call their homeland to support these aspirations with the bare necessitates they need to fly high. Smart Cities – a mission mode project undertaken by the government of India in 100 qualifying cities – is an endeavor to realize these very aspirations. In times, when smart technologies have knocked the world over with their performances, smart cities are a calling of the hour.  But how smart will these smart cities be, is matter of debate. As envisaged by the government some features of smart cities would include promoting mixed land use in area based developments, expanding housing opportunities and inclusiveness to all, creating walkable localities – reduced congestion, pollution and resource distribution, preserving and developing open spaces, promoting Transit Oriented Development (TOD), public transport and la...