NEW DELHI-The King and the Courtiers

itself. At one end the Union Finance Minister is. busy offering tax concessions and either abolishing outright or lowering the rates of direct taxes, including the tax-on property; at the other end the Planning Commission painstakingly puts together data to clinch the point that concessions in direct taxes over the past decade have not at all led to any buoyancy in tax revenues. Perhaps this was the last hurrah of the Commission, but it certainly makes nonsense of all that was stated in the National Development Council about how revenues are going to soar once the rich and the comfortably off are properly coddled.