Articles by Renuka Viswanathan

on VAT The Economic of Value Added Tax (Theory and Practice) by Sukumar Mukhopadhyay; Centax Publications, New Delhi, 2005;
RENUKA VISWANATHAN The most significant tax reform at the state level since independence is clearly the introduction of value added tax (VAT). Movement towards a more rational and economically neutral system of consumption taxation in a federal country in which sub-national governments are constitutionally empowered to levy taxes on goods and some services calls for consultation and compromise, consensus and conflict resolution among states as a group as well as between federal and provincial governments. This explains the delay of more than a decade between conceptualisation of the idea of a dual VAT for the country and formal enactment of state VAT laws and rules.

'Mr and Mrs Iyer' successfully depicts stereotyping and prejudice by playing up a stereotyped environment and the use of typecast characters. Equally important, it is a growing-up tale. It traces the movement of a woman's consciousness in the course of a single journey, the consequences of one decisive and unexpected action.

There will be, it has been announced, a shift from the current system of commodity taxation at the state level to value added taxation from April this year. This paper considers whether what is planned for implementation is in consonance with the core concepts of (destination-based) value added taxation and assesses the extent to which the present intiatives will lay a sound foundation for eventual modernisation of the indirect tax structure at the state level. The study has been made from the perspective of the existing commodity tax structure of Karnataka.

The Madhya Pradesh government has published a second human development report, the first was published in 1995. While it publishes data, the report does not analyse the data to draw any conclusions. The data tell us that higher incomes do not always yield human development, and that higher human development does not always mean equal benefit to men and women.