If The BJP Is Clear The Government Can't Provide Public Goods, Why Collect Taxes?
After last week's
tragedy in Gorakhpur in which 72 children died allegedly due to
non-availability of oxygen at a government hospital, BJP leaders have been desperate
to find excuses to defend the Uttar Pradesh government and the party itself. In its bid to
whitewash the tragedy, or even cover up and deflect the blame from itself, the
party has tried all kinds of unreasonable answers, but the worst came from senior
BJP leader and surface transport and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari. According to him, its
not "possible to provide professional healthcare to patients at government
health facilities."
Although, he didn't
specifically mention Gorakhpur, the context was too obvious. While the UP chief
minister Yogi Adityanath blamed the hospital authorities and even found unlikely reasons for the sudden death of a large number
of children at a single location, Gadkari tried to absolve the State
of its fundamental responsibility to provide healthcare to its people. Speaking at the
inauguration of the first phase of a National Cancer Institute in Nagpur, Gadkari said that the government was incapable of providing
healthcare because of "various factors such as non-availability
of expert doctors, skilled manpower, lack of funds and ticklish rules and
regulations," adding that "as such, inviting social institutions and
entrepreneurs to run such facilities on government lands provided at nominal
cost would help provide professional healthcare service to poor and middle
class patients."
Showing helplessness
at a tragic time when the nation needed stronger assurance from the party --
that rules the centre and 18 states, and trying to expand in the rest of India
-- that it's incapable in providing welfare to its people is a shocking let
down. His statement, and the ground reality in Uttar Pradesh that led to the
disaster, call into question the credibility of the BJP to govern. Gadkari is either
completely uninformed about the role of the State in public health in a
democracy, or he doesn't care. Probably he doesn't know that healthcare was
Barrack Obama's single most important political agenda during the two terms of
his presidency, that even Donald Trump tried to dismantle; or that a neoliberal
Margaret Thatcher couldn't touch the free National Health Services (NHS) while
she was privatising everything in England.
India is a country
with very high tax rates -- with the imposition of the the GST, the tax burden
of one with a relatively higher income could be as high as 58%. And to say that
the government was unable to care for its people's health after taking away a
sizeable part of their earnings as taxes is not just irresponsible, but
callous. If a government cannot provide basic services such as health, water,
public infrastructure and education that are inevitable for the survival of its
people, why should it levy taxes at all? What does it use the money for?
As in India, there are
many countries where direct and indirect taxes together can take away 50% or
more of people's earnings, but most of them guarantee high-quality, free healthcare and other
public utilities. Either through a directly operated public system such the
NHS in England, or those in countries such as France and Canada, where the
private sector does play an important part without an undue burden on the
people. These countries provide Universal Health Care (UHC), a system that is
cashless and available to everyone, rich or poor. Only in despotic and lawless
countries, people get nothing in return for their high taxes. By Gorakhpur
standards, India is certainly one of them...
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