Only in Goa

1) You ain't seen nothin yet
It ain't over yet. I am not talking about the politicians' lust for power rather the EC is not done with them yet. Election observers were recording on a daily basis the election expenses for even journos under the severest pressure to notice. Their video recordings are very accurate and are matched with a preset expense accounting system. So if Manohar Parrikar claims or as Babush already claimed their estimated 1000 Tee shirts were bought cheap at a retail sale, that's
not going to hold. The CEC has its own price tag for a huge list that even mall managers won't have. The CEC is clued-in believe me. Also, several EC junior officials had the time of their lives staking out politicians.

Thus observers discovered election posters of Ravi Naik and Subhash Shirodkar in farmhouses printed in Maharashtra. Ravi and Subhash each spent Rs25000. The posters had none of the statutory notices and were not authorized by the Collector. That makes the printer liable for a
6-month jail sentence and adds cumulatively to the chances of Ravi being disqualified. Six candidates have by official investigation and evidence crossed the CECs Rs5 lakh expenditure level. They are Ravi, Subhash, Manohar, Babush, Victoria and Anil Salgaocar. What went
against Manohar was his face appearing in advertisements almost daily.

Even appearing on stage with Congress, NCP and BJP national leaders' is deemed expenditure accountable and the EC has its own costing that includes the range from shaminias to kodels. Anil even dug a bore well in government land and the EC seized machinery used to dig two bore
wells.

It gets both funny and odd. A family confessed to the special observer for Calangute their house was painted by a candidate! The Pernem Shiv Sena candidate Gawandi Hanumant, a rich lawyer gave away 15 Hero Hondas. Two beneficiaries even gave written statements admitting they got a Rs.5000 advance. In the panchayat elections earlier two candidates gave away bikes. In
Taleigao shopkeepers were unusually giving away sewing machines.

2) Midnight blues
I am convinced the sound act is being used only as a combative weapon. Read: you don't like someone either blast the decibels or use it to punish your competitor. In Diwar where I live temples regularly blast their religious music through the night. That's right through the
night because of a certain compulsion I won't get into, mind you taking place in so-called secular Goa. An unemployed woman who attempted to built a Sai Baba temple pretentiously after a dawn miracle orchestrated by the saint was mercifully preempted by her neighbour because the blaring sound apart from disturbing the neighbourhood was disturbing students.

I take you to the Baga/Arpora belt where first Vanilla Lounge, then Club Cubana was shut down by the Bombay High Court but apparently somehow continues to be open. But owners are despairing because of the running around involved and the bribes that have to be paid. When
Vanilla Lounge was raided on March 21 the team was led by the North Goa Collector (his wife, is an IAS officer who decides which phirangi can stay back in Goa and spend their much loved forex.) VL had air conditioning that means it was enclosed, and that means it was sound
proof.

Strangely, our IAS man arrived with an SP and a DYSP and the Calangute Police Station claims it wasn't even informed. The two police officers too were not forewarned and received their nstructions at the last minute. Witnesses say when the posse arrived VL's double doors were
open and the decibel meter recorded 75 decibels. The permissible is 55. My point being the recording ought to have been done from outside, if the motive is to determine whether nearby residents are disturbed. VL has no residents living 300 mts behind it and 700 mts to its left and right sides.

At Tito's and Mambo's (now undergoing a costly infrastructure change to make it sound proof) when I last checked there were no 'residents' and yet there are complaints galore against them. Ditto for Ingo's Saturday Nite Bazaar where Ingo extremely conscious of his many 'resident' enemies walks around with a decibel meter constantly monitoring sound levels. SNB incidentally has more meters than the Goa Police, with three, has. Near VL, an open-air pub owned by Mumbai's Hard Rock Café and located 500 mts away, appears to get away with hell blaring loud music.

Ditto for a Saligao pub now owned by a Mumbaite that organizes trance parties exclusively for Russians. Believe me, Indians are kept away as the fliers handed out as invites are suspiciously selective as to whose palms they reach. So, its not entirely about 'residents' or public nuisance, its about people's vindictiveness and certain sinister motive that is targetted it is said against a certain section of entrepreneurs in Goa. It's also about a battle for beer. In the case of Saligao, trance parties often rock over 36-hour days but fortunately nearly all its real residents here own taxis that do roaring business all night and have therefore acquired convenient deafness syndrome.

3) Of horses and donkeys
The man heading a moneymaking corporation is getting a migraine with all the head butting he has to do with his babus. The corporation was allocated Rs15 lakh to showcase Panjim. Now his babus are busy scrambling around for chai bills etc to justify the Rs 15 lakh figure.
Our man pointed out they need not waste their precious time because the corporation is audited by CAG and even covered under the Companies and Income Tax act. "Let them get the headache, you concentrate on something more useful." The babus, used to decades of doing something they pass off as work, bleated at first and protested vehemently later at the radical approach. "When you can be a horse, why do you choose to be a donkey?" our man said in frustration. Ah, but their comfort zone lies there.

4) Only in Goa
This can happen only in Goa. In Maharashtra, Goa wineries are levied a Rs7.26 lakh K form registration plus a label registration fee of Rs5000. These are annual fees and apply to wine, liqueurs and IMFL.
Goa's wineries also pay 150 per cent of their declared manufacturing cost as excise duty. That means for a product say costing Rs100, the excise duty is Rs33.50. Additionally, Goa wineries pay 20 per cent ST that on the same product is Rs20. In this tax scenario Maharastra wineries pay nothing. Realistically speaking for a product costing Rs300, a Goa winery after paying 150 per cent excise duty (or Rs125) gets to retain only Rs175 (Rs300-125=175.) Whereas wineries in Maharashra retain the entire Rs300 and so offer Rs125 as sales promotion.

But, if Goa wineries offer Rs125 as sales promotion, they are left with only Rs50 from the Rs175 retained. The Goa winery is therefore clearly at a disadvantage in Maharashtra whereas Goa goes out of its way to oblige outstation producers. This is how. Goa levies only a label registration of Rs25,000 for outside wineries and Rs12000 for Goa wineries. Before the VAT regime Goa wineries enjoyed a 20 per cent ST holiday that was subsequently removed. Goa's excise duty is also Rs54 per case (12 bottles.)

Compare this with Maharashtra's 150 percent. Goa wineries are also levied 7 per cent octroi that in Maharashtra is refunded to local wineries. As Mumbai is the biggest wine market what Goa must do is levy the same protectionist taxes and bring Maharashtra to the table for talks. Karnataka too has a protectionist policy.

5) All at tax payer's expense
Did you know that each expedition to Antarctica costs the GOI about Rs 25cr and there have been 26 such trips since NIO chief Z A Quasim led the first contingent to the icy continent back in 1981? Did you also know that the minute a scientist flies out – as opposed to sails on the chartered ship – from South Africa to the Indian station at Antarctica, you tax payers are shelling out about Rs4-5 lakh per ticket? But Dr S K Das, advisor, Ministry of Environment and Science, has a complaint. When scientists return from their research in Antarctica they don't always continue with what was started there.
They go back to their old jobs as if the months' at Antarctica was some vacation. Das says that in fact, the screening committee found that 80 per cent of the scientific papers published in the country have no value because there is no productive endeavour at the end. He'd like that to change. Is anyone listening?

6) Strange but true
One of the reasons things don't move in Goa is because of its smallness. That's usually an oxymoron except when you take it in the context of corruption. So there's not much money to be made and therefore projects get stalled. That's what happened to the sewage treatment plant. One of the quotations for a simple but effective garbage treatment plant was Rs30,000. The kickback on something like this would be so miniscule that till today Goa does not have a plan
for garbage, nearly two years after a movement all over the state demanding that garbage be treated. If you don't believe me ask international fashion designer Wendell Rodricks. By the way, Wendell said he was contemplating moving out of Colvale thanks to the garbage problem there.

The same holds good for the beautification of Panjim. Apparently all that was needed to put in some traffic islands with greenery in the capital was Rs13 lakh but the CCP wanted a quote of Rs37 lakh – do the math, our city fathers wanted Rs25 lakh to line their pockets. A little bird tells me that the man who loves his plants refused "their" request to inflate the figure. "How could I ever justify this to the man above?" he says. So, he's left the employ of the government to set up his own business. Government - the last refuge of scoundrels?

7) Rationalising the irrational
The government's decision to reduce the duty on beer and exempt duty on export of liquor during 2006-07 resulted in an approximate Rs4 cr and Rs15 lakh loss respectively as compared to the previous year 2005-06. Eye Spy will try to show you how all this was done at the
behest and pleasure of the King of Good Times, one of the many madly in love with Goa, to the extent they are willing to build gargantuan bungalows that literally stretch from the main road right down to the beach, if you know what I mean.

Till then the export fee on foreign sales was as follows: IMFL Rs0.60 per bulk litre (BL) and for IMFL (whose alcoholic strength is above 80 U.P) Rs0.50 BL. For beer it was Rs0.30 per BL and for wine Rs0.50 BL. The export fee collected on foreign exports during 2004-05 and 2005-06
was Rs35,31,635 and Rs54,90,347 respectively. The Excise Department then headed by the Commissioner of Excise J B Singh actually recommended the proposed waivers for foreign exports despite as Singh said the annual loss of Rs50 lakh as per documents obtained by Eye Spy under the RTI.

There are only four units exporting IMFL to foreign countries: McDowell's, Gemini Distilleries, John Distilleries and Penguin Distilleries. McDowell's it was revealed in the documents has been
asking for the waiver of the export pass fee for overseas dispatches since 1999. Ideally, such proposals are considered only at the presentation of the regular budget, but Rane wanted the matter looked into as early as September 2006.

The Finance Department argued the case like this: In case of complete waiver, there would be a net annual loss of Rs50-60 lakh and the increased revenue on account of the bottling fee would not be clearly predictable and which was Rs25.80 lakh in 2005-06. Considering the increase in the volume of export, the net loss would still be in the range of Rs40-50 lakh taking into consideration the increased revenue of around Rs10-15 lakh on account of the bottling fee (the Excise Department charges a bottling fee of Rs2.50 per case on IMFL) and Singh argued that if the export fee was waived it would increase production and as a result boost bottling fee revenues.

Considering also the waiver losses and the increased bottling revenues, officials of the Finance Department said: Granting a 50 per cent waiver would result in revenue losses of Rs10-15 lakh; granting a complete waiver ie Rs0.60 per bottle would result in losses of Rs40-45 lakh. Critically, both the Chief Secretary and the Finance Secretary tried to impress on Rane that September was not the ideal time to make such "imprudent" changes and the government in the eyes of the public would be better off thinking of the waiver at the next regular budget.

The documents clearly reveal that Rane pushed through his proposal finally on September 30, 2006; and as he put down in writing in the official file: Competition has to be encouraged in order to earn foreign exchange. This will also help the brand to be able to withstand competition in the long run and also help our returns. On October 10, Rane personally pushed for as he put down in the file – a meeting with McDowell's. On November 10, 2006 the cabinet approved waiving the export pass fee leviable on IMFL, beer and wine exported overseas.