City of jobs fails to employ its own youth

GURGAON: A village of Gurgaon would generally present a rosy picture to an outsider – BMWs parked next to cowsheds, independent houses that are a luxury for many and so on. While it's no secret that many of these villagers sold off their agricultural lands to the government and corporates and became millionaires, a sneak peek into their lives shows the dark reality.

A survey conducted in seven villages by a civil society organization, Gurgaon Citizen Council, shows that 5,179 youths out of a total population of about 15,000 are unemployed.

According to the survey, more than 45% of youths below 26 years of age is unemployed. The study also reveals that despite being cash-rich, most of the parents in these villages didn't send their children for higher education. Only 33% youths from these villages have gone for graduation studies with about 50% youths dropping out after class X.

The survey was conducted in seven villages falling in Gurgaon Vidhan Sabha constituency, namely Gurgaon village, Bhimkheri, Chakkarpur, Sukhrali, Kanhai, Wazirabad and Silokhra. The fact that one-third of the youth from Gurgaon villages are unemployed goes to show that the government and the multinationals, which had brought lands with the promise of a better future for villagers, have neglected them. According to social analysts, unemployment among rural youth is also a reason behind rising crime rates in Gurgaon.

Gurgaon Citizen Council has written to the Haryana chief minister of Haryana, local MP and MLAs to address the problem. "The crime rate near the villages is increasing at a fast rate and that is only because of the increasing number of unemployed people. These villages are denied basic facilities like schools, parks and infrastructure after the lands were acquired by several government and private agencies," said the president of Gurgaon Citizen Council.

The council pointed out that HUDA had promised in year 2006 the uplift and improvement in the condition of the abandoned villages of the city but was not followed. Alka Dalal, an advocate by profession and a member of the council, says, "The city has a lot of villages but they are being neglected after their lands were acquired. Surprisingly, the youths in the villages are being caught for getting involved in crime because the only reason is lack of education." 

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Ministry of Finance push service tax mop-up

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Finance has asked the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) to make up for the revenue loss on account of oil duties rejig through additional mop up from the service sector, which constitutes 60% of the gross domestic product and has a 20% share in indirect tax collection.

The CBEC has already activated its revenue intelligence arm — the Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCEI) — that has launched a crackdown on some big ticket corporate tax evaders. In the first quarter of this fiscal, DGCEI has booked 80 cases against many of these corporate houses and also slapped a tax penalty demand of Rs 1,650 crore. DGCEI is the apex intelligence and investigating agency for combating evasion of Central Excise and Service tax. This fiscal, the DGCEI is giving special focus on service tax evasion at the behest of CBEC chairman Sumit Dutt Majumdar.

Last month, the government had scrapped 5% customs duty on crude and an equal percentage points on petrol and diesel, which came down to 2.5% to keep the price rise in check. It also reduced excise duty on oil products from 7.5% to 2.5%. The loss estimated by the finance ministry for nine months of this fiscal was Rs 39,000 crore of which Centre's share is likely to be in the range of Rs 24,000 crore.

Last year, the DGCEI had booked 117 cases of service tax evasion worth Rs 522 crore. In some of these cases, the amounts evaded are likely to increase as the investigations are in progress, said a senior finance ministry official. Some of the major detections of service tax evasion were in renting of immovable property service, business support service, telecom service, management, maintenance or repair and commercial or industrial construction services.

The most prevalent modus operandi adopted by evaders was providing the services in a clandestine manner without accounting for service tax such as suppressing the transactions from the department by not declaring the same in the periodical ST returns, incorrect availing of exemption notifications, collection of service tax but not deposing to the government exchequer, incorrect availing of CENVAT credit and undervaluation services.

On the Central excise side too, duty evasion detected by DGCEI during the first quarter of current fiscal is to around Rs 227 crore vis-à-vis detections of Rs 115 crore during the same period in the previous year, showing an increase of 98 %. An amount of Rs 205 crore has also been recovered from assesses towards unpaid Excise duty and Service Tax during the current quarter.

'Delhi Belly' finally gets clean chit in Nepal

Kathmandu: After being put on hold for 48 hours following censors' objections to the expletives peppering its dialogues, Aamir Khan's home production Delhi Belly finally reappeared in Nepal's theatres on Wednesday after the offending parts were addressed.

The Gopi Krishna Multiplex in Kathmandu, where the trouble started Sunday evening after police raided its theatres and seized prints of the Abhinay Deo-directed film, told on Wednesday that Delhi Belly was back on the menu after a written apology to the Film Censor Board by the owner of the theatre, Uddhav Poudel.

Poudel is also the sole distributor of the film in Nepal.

Poudel apologised to the censors, agreed to pay a fine of NRS 5,000 if required and gave an undertaking that he would not in future screen films flouting censors' recommendations.

Nepal's censors had agreed to clear Delhi Belly for viewing by theatre goers above 16 years provided the distributor saw to it that an offending scene showing one of the protagonists, played by Imran Khan, visiting a brothel, was cut and some expletives in two scenes muted.

Chetan Sapkota, one of the censors, said they had agreed to overlook the distributor flouting the recommendations in view of the financial loss he would incur if they called for stronger action. However, Sapkota warned that in future, the board would not show any leniency with films that promoted obscenity or vulgarity.

Delhi Belly, which received good reviews by Nepal's press before it was taken off from Sunday evening, is likely to prosper from the bout with the censors that brought widespread publicity and whetted filmgoers' appetites.

Jai Nepal, another multiplex in Kathmandu, said they had been receiving calls since morning with people asking if the film was back.

Dharma Adhikari, associated with the Media Foundation, a non-profit research and policy initiative, said the Delhi Belly incident went deeper than the use of profanities in the dialogue.

"...The fact is, relations have strained in recent years between the censor board and the studios," Adhikari wrote in the Republica daily on Wednesday.

Adhikari said that the recent amendments in the Film (Production, Exhibition and Distribution) Act of 2001 had increased the power of censors and imposed greater curbs on foreign films.

In the age of Internet explosion, the cuts in Delhi Belly, Adhikari said, would not keep the scenes and words that the censors found offensive out of Nepal.

"Many don't have to go to Gopi Krishna (to watch the expurgated parts)," he said. "If they want, they can as well download in their personal devices the censored clips."