The government think-tank, Niti Aayog (the National Institution for Transforming India) has released a draft three year action agenda for public consultation, which suggests a host of reforms with the objective of accelerating economic growth and increasing employment opportunities.
The three-year agenda (2017-18 to 2019-20) has seven parts, divided into 24 chapters, which proposes to check tax evasion & expand tax base, to double the income of farmers by 2022, to bring down land prices to make housing affordable through increased supply of urban land, adoption of consumer-friendly measures such as provision of electricity to all households by 2022, LPG connection to all BPL households, elimination of black carbon by 2022 and extension of the city gas distribution programme to 100 smart cities.
The draft agenda underlined the need for recalibrating the role of the government by limiting its involvement in activities that do not serve a public purpose. The agenda also includes the closure of loss-making CPSEs & strategic disinvestment in 20 state-owned companies, creation of an institutional mechanism to promote competition through comprehensive review, reform of government regulations across all sectors and strengthening of the public procurement system. Besides, it also suggests the cross-subsidy reduction in the power sector to ensure competitive supply of electricity to the industry.
Niti Aayog suggested in its draft three-year action plan that the government should tackle tax evasion, expand the tax base and simplify the tax system through reforms such as consolidating customs duty to a unified rate. Further elaborating it said that there should be no distinction between urban & rural and agricultural income should be taxed at the same threshold as personal income. However, rural agriculture income tax could be an average of three years as it is subject to weather fluctuations.