Finding the people who did not vote for his party

Eventhough, there were many things that I do not like about Y.S.Jagan Mohan Reddy, I could not stop appreciating his technical skills.

In the recent MLC elections in the MLAs quota, YSRCP found the people who did not vote for them. 

In India, all the elections are conducted in secret. When a person is voting, he/she is not supposed to show the vote to anyone. In the recent MLC elections, the MLAs did not show their vote to anyone. Still, YSRCP found their MLAs who did not vote for them.

Unlike regular elections that are conducted for the general public, in the elections for the upper house and president, one has to give the ranking of the candidates. The candidates would be selected by proportional representation. 

In this particular case, since there was only one extra candidate than the no.of seats, in general, only the first and second choices of each vote would have impact, and other choices would not have any impact.

What YSRCP did was, it gave unique choices to each of their MLAs for all the options. Each MLA is supposed to vote exactly by the rankings that were given to him/her. 

Eventhough, the MLA is not going to show the vote during the counting, the counting agent can view the ballot paper and they have noted down the rankings for each ballet paper. They got all the rankings of all the ballot papers, matched with the expected rankings of their MLAs, and checked which ones were missing. From that, they found the MLAs who did not vote for their party and they were expelled from the party. 

Subsidies vs Incentives

In Jan 2016, Modi questioned, why benefits given to poor people are called subsidies, and why benefits given to rich, like exemption on dividends and long term capital gains are called as incentives?

When something is given from the treasury of the government, that is called subsidy. 

When something may or may not come to the treasury, and the Government decides to not take it, it is called incentive. 

When the government removes subsidies, the government will save the equivalent money in their treasury. 

But, when the government removes incentives, they may not save the equivalent money. Some businesses or transactions might be running only because of that incentive. Once the incentive is gone, they may not do that business or transaction. The resultant money that the government would get after removing an incentive is always less than the incentive amount that the government projects. 

Exemption on dividends and long term capital gains were not at all incentives. It is just that they were taxed in a different way. 

Companies pay tax on their profits. After paying the tax, they used to pay dividend distribution tax again, and then they distribute the dividend. Once the dividend comes to the investor, the investor does not need to pay any tax on that [It was already taxed twice.] Modi called it an incentive, because you are not paying the tax third time [For the exact same amount which is already taxed twice].

Couple of years back, Modi's government removed the dividend distribution tax and made the dividend as taxable for the investor. Dividend is coming out of the profit that the company made. Company already paid the tax on the profit that it got. You are paying the tax a second time, because it changed hands. 

Before 2004, Long term capital gains in equity were not exempted from income tax. After Chidambaram became finance minister, he exempted tax on the long term capital gains in equity, and introduced securities transaction tax. 

Modi removed the exemption on the long term capital gains in equity and kept the securities transaction tax. [Again double taxation]. 

Public vs Government Organizations

In a private organization, a vision is set for the organization. To achieve the vision, the organization would employ people with appropriate terms and conditions.

In a government organization, the employees would set a personal vision for themselves. The employees would expect the organization to work towards achieving the personal vision of the employees. In case the organization does not do that, the employees and/or prospective employees may fight and even destroy the public properties.

Speak only Truth

Whenever I hear, "Speak only Truth", I always feel uncomfortable. 

If someone asks me, how much salary am I getting, why should I tell the truth? I don't want to tell how much I am earning. Most of the time, I generate a random number and I tell that number. 

If anyone still says, I should speak only the truth, then I would like to ask a few questions and get the truth from them.

What is the username/password of your internet banking account?

What is your email password which is linked with all your social accounts?

Can you tell me the OTP that you have just received on your mobile?

Some time back, when I was doing one transaction with a person, that person asked me to tell a lie to the middleman, so that the brokerage would be saved. I refused for multiple reasons. Main reason was, I need that broker for my future transactions and if there is any breach of trust now, I won't get any favorable deals later on. 

In another case, I forced one person to tell a lie to the middleman, so that I could save the brokerage. [I paid the brokerage for the initial contract, and wanted to avoid brokerage for the extension of the contract.]

In a few cases, I refused to tell lies, because the lie is not convincing. 

In a few other cases, I did not tell lies, because I did not have answers for the follow up questions that may come.

There was at least one instance (there might be more), when I told the absolute truth, but I tried to tell in such a way that, everyone thought, it was a lie. 

Whether I tell lies or truth depends on multiple things. Don't expect truth from me. 

Since, it is not going to benefit any of us, it should not be done.

I heard the following statement from many people in many different situations.

Since, it is not going to benefit any of us, it should not be done. 

My response used to be, what are you going to lose, if it is done? Since I get some benefit out of it, this needs to be done. If you are going to lose anything out of it, then we will discuss that and see how we can resolve that. 

Of course, Till now, I could never convince the people who said that. [Eventhough they were not going to lose anything.]