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Aunindyo Chakravarty Profile picture
Aunindyo Chakravarty
@AunindyoC
Former Senior Managing Editor, NDTV India & NDTV Profit.
May 23, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The Strange Story of Mr Gupta and the Rs.2,000 note (a tale in 12 acts):

'Twas a cool evening, in early November, seven years ago. Gutpa Ji asked his missus for a shawl as he switched to his favourite news channel, India TV. Modi Ji was going to announce something big. (1) And then came the bombshell. All 1000 & 500 rupee notes had been made illegal. Gupta ji sat on his sofa for a few seconds and stared at the TV screen. How could Modi ji do this to us? We shopkeepers were his biggest fans. Doesn't he know this notebandi will destroy us? (2)
May 15, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
B/w 2016-17 & 2019-20, Karnataka got 2.2% of the total Budget of the Centre.

Thanks to the 15th finance commission, the state's share is now down to 1.1%

If it gets 2.2%, Karnataka will get an additional Rs.53,000 crore, more than enough to take care of the so-called 'freebies' This is only one part of the story: The finance commission says the centre must give 41% of its gross tax revenues to states, but it only gives 31%. This is made possible by imposing 'cesses' which do not need to be shared with states....
Apr 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There was no Mughal state in India.

The Mughals were a conglomeration of kinship-based communities, concentrated in urban centres.

The mansabdari system was a sophisticated version of tribal redistribution of surplus-product - its monetisation notwithstanding.... .... the state, as an abstract theoretical concept, is the site of the reproduction of power relations.

In the subcontinent, the dominant apparatus that reproduced power-relations, is what we have come to know as caste.
Apr 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
0.2% of rural households held 10+ hectares of land, with an average 'net' receipt from agriculture of Rs.43,599. Note this is NOT A2+FL cost, which would give us real net income from farming.

This is below the taxable income, after all deductions..... This means, less than 0.1% of all households have farm income which could be considered taxable. Yet, if they do earn the fictitious Rs.10 crore, they most likely have fixed deposits, for which they will be paying income tax under the heading 'income from other sources'
Apr 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One-third of the aggregate spending by the centre and states is financed through fiscal-deficits. Who gains from this?

A fiscal-deficit is financed either through borrowing from the public or by printing money.

When the govt borrows, it creates an equivalent amount of.... ...of savings in the hands of those who can afford to invest in government bonds or build up savings in banks.

There is one word for such people - the 'Rich'.

Every rupee that the govt spends on interest is a return on savings for the Rich.

But what about printing money?...
Apr 16, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Every now and then, I come across the incredibly banal neoliberal, libertarian, collegiate rubbish, that the top 3% of Indians bear the burden of funding the rest of the country, since they are the only ones who pay income-tax. There are innumerable ways to prove that this is.... ....an idiotic argument. Here are just a few:
1) Income tax accounts for just 26% of the gross tax revenues of the centre. So three-fourths come from elsewhere
2) If you add tax revenues of states and centre, income tax is 15-17%.
3) Net Income tax makes up just 15% of....