The assessment made by T N Ninan in his article, "Mr Modi's ministers" (May 14) regarding Finance Minister Arun Jailey's performance is unfair. Non-performing assets of banks have been around for long; they are not restricted to Jaitley's tenure as finance minister. He has tried to correct the situation, which his predecessors did not.
In the banking sector, the introduction of the Jan-Dhan Yojana during Jaitley's tenure was a great move aimed at bringing weaker sections into the monetary sector and enabling direct benefits transfer.
With regard to the "absurdly arbitrary tax orders" mentioned in the article, the government cannot instruct the adjudicator to pass an order in a particular way in an individual case. When a retrospective law has been passed and not revoked, officers cannot pass adjudication orders ignoring it. Some companies, particularly Vodafone, have made it a lobbying point, regardless of its merit.
Even Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan has said - and this newspaper has reported it, too - that although Vodafone has not paid a single paise of the tax demanded of it, every time the government talks of a predictable tax structure, "we get Vodafone sort of flung back at us". This statement coming from a non-political economist deserves attention.
On the matter of not being able to get the Goods and Services Tax Bill passed, the onus is not on Jaitley alone; the Congress' recalcitrance and its insistence on fixing 18 per cent as the tax rate limit in the Constitution are responsible, too. Even former Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has not supported the tax rate cap demand.
Sukumar Mukhopadhyay, New Delhi
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