GST OR GSTN'T?

What hath GST wrought? Weighing up the tax reform’s impact one year later, we find a maze of issues to be navigated.

- Lola Nayar and Prachi Pinglay-Plumber

 

 

 

IT’S a riot of colours on the ground floor of a textile unit, Kimaya Industries, just outside Surat, a manufacturing hub in Gujarat. Machine powered looms whir incessantly, weaving multicoloured threads into colourful fabric. On another floor, workers design embroidery to be woven into dress materials. Reams of sarees are stacked on one side, ready to be packed and shipped. Business, it would appear to the untrained eye, is booming.

But not quite. For the 85-odd workers, there’s a baleful touch to the pattern forming on the cloth. Over the last one year, about 15 co-workers have lost their jobs. A sense of unease hangs in the air, lingering even a year after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was sprung on India’s small businesses. Coming on the back of the crippling blow demonetisation dealt in November 2016, everyone’s GST baptism perhaps became more thorny and difficult than it may otherwise have been. The months that followed did see some things smoothed out. Hundreds of miles to the north in Uttar Pradesh, Dinesh Singhal, MD of Meerut-based Kanohar Electricals Ltd, says his business has flourished due to GST as it cut delays at interstate check gates, allowing his products to reach their destinations in “40–50 per cent less time”.