Some tips from Santa on good governance

Santa Claus is known globally for his — yes, his is still a male preserve — penchant for grunting his massive bulk through chimneys, including, miraculously, the narrow outlets of smokeless challahs, into homes to bestow gifts on sleeping children. Congress president Rahul Gandhi went a step further by announcing that if voted to power in the 2019 general election, agricultural loans across the country — a staggering Rs 11 trillion, around seven per cent of India’s GDP — would be waived. Santa would much rather have gone the way the government of Odisha proposes to — avoiding loan waivers but enhancing rural incomes by providing a fixed, and thereby progressive, cash transfer to all small and marginal farmers, including landless share-croppers; free crop, life and personal accident insurance and cash support for the differently-abled and the elderly. Santa would also have used his elves and microscopic drones to ferret out honest small and micro-businessmen with a viable revenue model without evading tax but who were beggared by demonetisation or GST. Santa would much rather have gone the way Odisha government proposes to — avoiding loan waivers but enhancing rural incomes by providing fixed cash transfer to small farmers The writer is adviser, Observer Research Foundation