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CRANK'S CORNER

        The economy is said to be very buoyant. Those in the know claim that it is growing at over nine per cent, as if it had been drinking some fiscal Complan or Horlicks. But the vast multitude, whose number, by the way, seems to be growing even faster, don't understand economy. So it doesn't matter whether it is galloping at 6 or 60 per cent.

        But have you wondered why most of us don't understand economics and come to hate it alongside mother-in-law? It is all due to the economists.

        Economists write in such a manner than both T Rajendhar and Visu in combination will sound easy and laconic in comparison. Or worse, even Crank's Corner may seem Enid Blyton authored.

        Engineering and medical subjects certainly took off in this country simply because those streams of learning did not incorporate 'economics' in the curriculum.

        Forget me, this is what John Kenneth Galbraith (one of the big daddies of economics) had to say: 'Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practised in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.' 'Bullshit' is what he was trying to say. But it has taken an economist a full three sentences. That is the problem with them, asked to bring a glass of water they will get down to work for a water tank and come around three years later with a blueprint for it.

        Milton Friedman, another big cheese who spoke grandly for liberal ideas, said: 'Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.' English certainly was not his property; that is why he had written the way he had. And true to being a liberal, he had been pretty liberal with his choice of words.

        But the one who is even more impenetrable than an economist is the economist-accountant combination. My simple theory is that tax collection in this country will go up, and the economy will trot at an even faster clip, if the relevant laws are written in a manner that are - forget understandable - at least readable.

        'Furnishing of Declaration by Taxpayer in Form 12C 3.6 Sub-section (2B) of S 192 enables a taxpayer to furnish particulars of income under any head other than 'Salaries' and of any tax deducted at source thereon in the prescribed form (No.12C) vide Annexure II. After an amendment made to the Income Tax Rules, the particulars may be furnished in a simple statement, which is properly verified by the taxpayer in the same manner as in Form 12C. Such income should not be a loss under any such head other than loss under the head 'Income from House Property' for the same financial year.'

        Though I am not an English major, I write in the language day in and day out for a living. So my grasp of it is slightly higher than that of an average Indian. But I don't have even the foggiest idea of what the aforementioned (by the way, this is another word that auditors are partial to) paragraph is talking about. For all I cared, it could be about global warming or Shilpa Shetty's love life.

        Even the most tax-fearing gent is bound to develop rashes all over his body if he gets anywhere near such writing. I can't figure out why those who compute the tax laws and other such rules have to write in alpha-numeric code. Take away the numbers, their language would be deader than the dodo. All the rules have sub-sections, suber-section and it goes ad nauseum. Take the most quoted tax law section, that which concerns personal income tax. It is 80 something. It has so many sub-classifications that the English language does not have enough letters to accommodate all of them. So don't be surprised if you find your auditor quote with authoritative gusto the rule '80-HH-II-XYZLMNOPQ', though you may be pardoned if you thought that it was a kindergarten student reciting the alphabet in random confusion.

        If an average Joe (or Janakiraman) says that he files his own tax returns, either he must be bluffing or he must be writing it the way I penned my physics exams - just mindlessly filling blank spaces without having a clue as what was in the question.

        Methinks the tax laws are framed the way they have been just to keep the auditors in business. And the budget papers weigh a tome due to those letters scrawling all over like creepy snakes on a board game.

        So this budget day when the Finance Minister and the sundry other economists talk in those auditorial abracadabra, I will be safely tucked away in some theatre that screens a T Rajendhar film. And, if you watch the budget, would you care to note whether TR's films have been given a tax exemption for improving the sales of headache medicines under - well, you guessed it -'80-asdfghjklqwertyuiopzxcvbnm'?