There aren’t any exceptions. Come budget time, any budget, there are bound to be many laments about how the ordinary man, the poor man wasn’t given any relief.
The press, particularly, is practically resplendent with such statements. Why aren’t there as many relief packages for the public, especially when the poor are being crushed under the weight of taxes?
But the poor, as it turns out, aren’t taxed. Not income tax, at any rate. The annual income exemption for income tax was raised this budget from Rs 300,000 to 400,000 a year. That means anyone pulling in under Rs 33,000 a month doesn’t have to pay income tax at all. That is way into the middle-class.
Point conceded (grudgingly) but the poor do pay indirect taxes, say the pressmen. The poor and rich alike pay the same GST on products. True. But the rich and poor tend to buy different products. In Pakistan, like the world over, the bulk of the household budgets of the poor goes to food and shelter. Both don’t get have any indirect taxes in Pakistan. Yes, as part of the overall economy, the poor do face the general inflation contributed in part by the indirect taxation on fuel products but that is all.
In a country where the government measures grinding poverty in terms of caloric intake, words like poverty should not be thrown around. Has anyone reading this editorial known hunger, really? Not the I’m-famished variety but the indignity of never having enough to eat?
The penchant of the urban middle-classes, from which most of the media is culled, to think the problems it faces are the problems of the whole of the polity is pervasive on the media.
Consider the brouhaha over the CNG loadshedding. Affecting only car-owners, it gets a disproportionate amount of media attention. The poor travel by public transport and the lower-middle-class by motorcycles. No CNG usage, therefore. What about CNG-powered public transport? Well, that quantum of CNG could be sold to the public transport sector at a subsidised rate as opposed to petrol which could be pilfered easily.
Sticking with public transport, there is staggering inequality in road usage, with the lion’s share of the roads being hogged by private cars. Since there is much negative space in cars, progressive cities around the world have either heavily taxed private motor vehicles or charged them in terms of longer travel times. This would mean that in another country, an idea like the Punjab CM’s rapid bus transit scheme (great idea, by the way) would be implemented in a heartbeat no matter the inconvenience it causes car owners in terms of longer alternate routes because it benefits a larger section of the populace that travels by buses.
In our country, following such a move, TV stations would be taking vox pops from car-owners lamenting how the government doesn’t take care of the “common man.”
