The state of Goa’s financial mess is reaching dangerous proportions. Nobody is willing to raise the red flag as the ones that are paying the price are ordinary tax-paying Goans and they are mostly ignorant of the fact. While the leaders that are consistently flashed on the media as saviors continue to overstretch the budget, hoping when it comes to light, they would have already left the office enjoying in some exotic location or shifting the blame on the then government in office. If they manage to camouflage it for longer periods of time then they might be able to delay the inevitable for the Generation Next to pick up the tab.
While some Goans do acknowledge that successive governments have not been spending wisely, thereby affecting their quality of life, many are unable to understand the financial riddle that is cleverly used by governments. Then there are some citizens whose primary interest is to personally milk the government to the maximum, financial prudence, be damned. While sparing the reader of number crunching here are some facts they ought to know why every government’s largesse will deprive the average Goan’s quality of life.
The state of Goa is apparently taking loans from banks to finance the many schemes they have committed to Goans. Here is what you ought to understand; when business entities take loan they invest in businesses and hope to make a profit that will be more than the interest and the loan amount they have to pay the banks. If everything goes as planned then everybody is happy, the business makes its money, banks get their share back and the business entity starts generating its own cash to finance further growth and might or might not depend on banks in future. Meantime it has created sufficient assets through internal accruals and the company is now on strong financial footing after some hand holding from the banks.
The problem comes when government starts borrowing money from banks which in Goa instead of using it judiciously on priority infrastructure is used mostly to blow on preferred groups or sometimes paid as ransom money to the most vocal groups to buy their silence, hoping they stop their threats to bring down legitimate governments. Unfortunately the government does not have any business to run and therefore will not make any profit to repay the loan and the interest. The only revenue it creates is by happily taking money from its citizens as per their whims and fancies not forgetting the fancy tax lingo and innovative ways to collect tax from citizens. So the more social security schemes are announced and more and more people subscribe to them the more we tax-paying Goans will have to dig into our not so deep pockets. If you happen to be ignorant of the tax paying situation than it means you are wearing clothes with pockets alright but unfortunately with big holes in them and everybody knows how money can fallout from these holes.
Everybody in Goa is not that naïve though, and many are aware of how they are being taxed to the hilt. Has anybody figured out why street food is mushrooming in Goa lately, because Goans are now tired of going to restaurants and pay not only for the food and the ambience of the place, but the exorbitant tax that come along. A lose-lose situation to the restaurant owner and the customer because the government with their larger share of tax is slowly pushing the restaurant customer with not so deep pocket from patronizing restaurants. Remember the government also needs to balance its budget, so they are forced to collect tax from anything that is doing well in the country, which means to finance its unnecessary schemes they catch hold of people going to restaurants and make them pay up.
It does not end there, now Goans are also made to pay additional tax on cleanliness. Don’t get carried away with the fancy name given to that tax, Swach Bharat Cess simply means we must now finance for additional sweepers and probably road cleaning machines, just because some of our fellow citizens do not have civic sense and are unable to control our basic urge to throw garbage everywhere. A bad habit of one citizen is slowly making a hole in the other citizen’s pocket. That’s not all, the politician will come and blackmail you with some fancy patriotic jargon and make you pick up garbage that somebody else littered. So get your hands dirty and also burn a hole in your pocket. Could anybody not think of a fining system that would not only get the job done but also create resources for the mission?
Both the above examples tell you one thing that there is a tussle between citizens that pay taxes and the ones that use up the funds. While the ones using up the funds, in the name of enforcing the law, tend to bulldoze the ones that pay up, a time will come when the tables will turn and the arrogant will be shown the door. It’s just a matter of time when Goans realize that everything the government spends comes from their own pockets. So those Goans who are availing schemes they don’t deserve, or force politicians to make designer schemes that suit a set of people, they better ‘Give it Up’, because when the realization will dawn upon the ones that finance these schemes be prepared for a severe backlash, because a hole in the pocket cannot be hidden for too long, the owner of the apparel will eventually find out.
(Plastino D’Costa is a business consultant)
