Ashish Aggarwal: Value-added tasks

BACKSTAGE

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The 43-year old Chakrabarty began his career in 1982 with Bradma of India in Calcutta (as it was then known) as a sales executive, and in his last stint at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) managed to swing a lucrative outsourcing deal from ABN Amro. He's on the IT sub-committees of both the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) as well as on Ficci's defence IT sub-committee.

Chakrabarty's role in implementing VAT is critical since, as he explains, the existing sales tax system is quite different from the VAT that is going to replace it on April 1 in a yet-indeterminate number of states. States can, says Chakrabarty, manage to administer sales tax with little or no computerisation and deal with tax evasion relying largely on manual systems but this option will no longer be available under VAT.

Under VAT, data filed by each dealer (on his purchases as well as sales) creates an information chain, and this is what enables cross verification and helps nab evaders "" this is why VAT is said to be self-regulatory. Since input tax information on dealers may originate anywhere in the state, cross-verification requires secure networking of different sales tax offices located within the state.

In addition, since goods pass state borders in the course of interstate trade, networking arrangements are required to connect sales tax check-posts with other offices of the Department. VAT also requires centralised databases to enable data sharing and better control over dealers.

While there is no one agency responsible for implementing VAT across the country, TCS is perhaps the largest "" the National Informatics Centre is doing this for some states and some others are doing it on their own.

Chakrabarty's team has Gujarat, Delhi, Kerala, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and six other states as its clients for developing and implementing VAT software. Kerala is trying to just modify its existing sales tax software and, Chakarbarty says this is akin to modifying a car to make it a truck!

Even after burning the midnight oil, Chakrabarty points out, some states have simply left it too late. Bihar and Pondicherry are way behind in computerisation, he says. Ditto in the case of Tamil Nadu. Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are exceptions, and computerisation is either complete or has progressed substantially, though things have cooled off in Madhya Pradesh since it being BJP-ruled means it will not be implementing VAT. Work for Delhi and Assam was also completed last year, he says.

Dealing with government comes easily to Chakrabarty as he manages TCS's government business worldwide including India, Australia, the UK, the US, Mexico, South Africa and Malaysia. He is confident of raising the share of government business in TCS's global revenues to double digits within two years from the lower single digit share at present.

"One difference in dealing with Indian authorities compared to some of the developed countries is that Indian authorities at times do not have a clear idea on what they want. This is also improving now and the Rs 341-crore MCA 21 project of ministry of company affairs is a good example of well articulated needs," says Chakrabarty, referring to the project that will computerise the system of filing company returns "" all documents would be filed electronically when the project is up and running.

VAT is not the only thing on Chakrabarty's radar. This 43-year-old also has National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) as his client for developing software for the Tax Information Network (TIN), which will enable the government to check tax evasion.