When people realise what’s been done to them, they will react more sharply than they react to increases in arhar dal and onion prices. For the common man, rising interest rates, taxes, all mean inflation. This government may have done a fine job of keeping its deficit under control. But if its tax collections have risen so massively, if there is service tax on all kinds of things including tuition, tents and commercial rents, if all of India’s usually bankrupt states are cash-surplus now because of VAT, it is all going out of somebody’s pocket. And these additional taxes are being passed on to somebody. That somebody is not exactly one among the handful who constitute India’s list of billionaires who fill the pages of some pink papers and fill the rest of us with envy. That somebody is not even you and me. It is your housemaid, my driver, your neighbourhood press-wala and so on. By all accounts, today nearly three crore Indian families carry the burden of EMIs — that is, nearly 10 crore voters. Most of them are ordinary folk, aam aadmi. Billionaires do not have to borrow to buy their toys. The same aam aadmi is today reeling under the weight of new taxes levied in the name of the poor who, in turn, have no idea where that money is going. The Congress, therefore, is setting itself up for slaughter, earning the wrath of the rapidly growing urban and semi-urban populations while at the same time earning no gratitude from the really poor.

... contd.