Absolute Honesty

Abiding by laws and paying taxes honestly makes a person 'Honest', I used to think.

This is relative honesty. Honesty with respect to the laws. If someone tells you that even the law makers' intentions were not at all honest and they have purposefully kept some loop holes open to help the rich. Would you call your act of paying taxes timely 'Absolute honesty'?

An employee's take home salary is what he get after deduction of taxes and after that, all expenses are taxed while for an organization all the expenses are tax free and the left over will be taxed. This is the big gap the law makers have purposefully kept in most of the countries of the world.

We all have grown up celebrating the goodness of heroes like Robin Hood who used to rob the rich and distribute the robbed money to poor. The story compelled masses to think that taxes should be more for rich that also means to punish the rich for being rich. The burden of this learning from the story falls on middle class because rich have the visibility that law makers are not at all honest and abiding to the laws thus imposed doesn’t qualify one to be an absolute honest human being.

In one of the news channel, once Kapil Sibbal accepted that he, being a govt. authority had sanctioned a big land in Delhi to a rich business man for a school building just for 1 rupee only. The matter can be considered as corruption that such a big land allotted to rich man for just 1 rupee. He however justified saying that it’s a responsibility of govt. to build the schools and hospitals and we intended the same partnering with that rich man. Obviously, the rich man will build the school and manage that and will keep the fee low for students but in a long run the school will become asset of his family forever. After few years, he might increase the fee also.

Had Kapil Sibbal given the land to a poor person, would he ever be able to build a school there? So in a way, govt. agreed for a partnership and helped a rich man build a school for kids and that's rightly government’s job.

In the dilemma of right or wrong or time bound right or wrong the absolute honesty is still a matter for individual thinking and deciding that isn't it too costly to possess it?  

- Amit Roop