GST CUTS: A DIWALI GIFT OR A DEBT UNPAID?

Seven years, Rs. 117 lakh crore collected—and yet citizens still walk on broken roads, breathe toxic air, endure erratic power, and queue for free rations.

- RAKESH K. CHITKARA

So, should I clap or grieve? Perhaps both. Clap, because India has finally moved towards a rational, citizen-friendly GST. Grieve, because the reform came seven years late, after taxpayers had already been overcharged.

The applause will be hollow unless we see a change not just in the tax code but in the lived experience of citizens. GST 2.0 must not only be about lower rates. It must also be about higher returns—to the taxpayer, to the middle class, to the nation's poor who still stand in ration lines, and to the very idea of India's development story.

Since the introduction of GST in July 2017, taxpayers have contributed an astonishing 117 lakh crore in consumption taxes. A large part of this came from middle-class pockets—the salaried, the shopkeepers, the small entrepreneurs, the families who pay their bills on time and rarely complain.

If the newly announced 5% and 18% slabs had been applied from the start, much of this burden would have been lighter. Back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that the average middle-class Indian paid thousands of rupees for hard-earned (income tax paid) money over these years purely due to a faulty slab design and inflated rates. This is money that could have gone to savings, children's education, or healthcare.

The justification was simple: this money would be ploughed back into building a modern India. Better roads, stronger bridges, unclogged drains, reliable electricity, robust healthcare, clean air, and safe water. We paid GST at every shop counter, with quiet hope that it would return as public goods.

IN REALITY...