Will there be more number of Children in future?

The world population is 7.3 billion people and ever since the number has crossed 1 billion critics say that world cannot sustain more people. Well as of now they have proved wrong. But what will be future? When will the global population growth end?

My grandfather had 13 siblings while my father had 5 siblings and I had 1. About 99% of people of my father’s age group have no more than 2 children, even though they had more than 2 siblings. So what changed in one generation and why the average number of children in a house hold has fallen drastically?

I am a big fan of Prof Hans Rosling, who has numerous videos online explaining how the population will grow in future. He says that religion and number of babies per woman has little correlation. 

The important factors affecting the number of babies per woman are:

1.      Infant mortality

2.      Education of mother

3.      Income growth 

4.      Increased age at marriage

5.      Increase in working women

According to Prof Rosling the world population will peak at 10 billion and not cross above that number. He has various statistical models behind this number. However the interesting number is that we have reached the “child peak”. We are not going to have any more number of children than we already have. Due to increase in life expectancy even though we will always have 2 billion children the total world population will increase by 3 billion and stay there.

So for a school what is the future? If the number of children in the world are not going to increase why do we still need new schools and will they have enough children to sustain the infrastructure?

 The answer is in migration and change in the needs of parents.

70% of India stays in villages. In any developed economy not more than 25% of the country would stay in villages. So even if we hope in next 10 years we achieve 50% urbanisation we are talking of 24 crore people coming to stay in cities. So if they come and stay in top 100 cities it will be adding 2.4 lakh people in each city every year. They will bring children with them and they will need education. So schools need to be built in cities.

 

Another major problem is change in needs of the parents. Earlier Gujarati medium schools were in demand. Now English medium school are in demand. In metros people are preferring CBSE school so taking a job transfer from one city to another is not difficult. The rich prefer international schools which have a different standard all together. So schools will need to change themselves with changing times. Earlier having swimming and horse riding as part of school curriculum sounded far-fetched. Today there are few schools already providing that and in future small schools will close down and such modern schools will increase.

AC in School, a luxury or a necessity?

A school with proper fans, light and toilet facilities was a dream come true for most Indians few decades ago. I remember children coming from other schools to my school used to appreciate the number of tube lights / fans in the class.

These days the expectations of parents have increased. Today AC has become an expectation and several school across India are meeting that. Children themselves are used to AC more than ever before. Malls, airport and own homes are all AC. Its normal to get used to comfort and children get used to comfort of AC quite fast. Also the global warming has led to temperatures which are beyond the bearable capacity. To make children even play at such a temperature is difficult, let alone study.

Indian Railways launched “Garib Rath” in 2005 targeting at poor people, as mentioned in the name. Even that train was fully air-conditioned. This means that officially AC is no more a luxury but a necessity. Remember that was 10 years ago.

The founding father of modern Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew (who died recently -23 March 2015), mentioned in one of his interview that his biggest achievement in his life was doing all government offices AC. He said that AC for tropical climate was a boon and it boosted productivity. In his entire life he has not done anything more important than buy AC for offices!

So will AC help in schools?

I have interacted with a few school administrators and teachers who have recently implemented AC in their school. There has been a major improvement in student’s attention span. The children drink less water as they perspire less and they take less bathroom breaks. This leads to more time spent on education.

A major benefit of AC would be reduction of noise from outside the classroom. Air cutting noise of Fans make lecture delivery difficult also. So with AC teacher has to shout less and that way teachers get less tired which improves the quality of their work.

AC rooms will be closed so the entry of mosquitoes is less. As we all know the cases of dengue are very high and such preventive measures are required. Air pollution levels have also increased in India. Dust particles and pollutants are reduced in AC as there is an air filter which cleans the air.

I personally think that India is developing fast and the expectation of parents are changing fast. Even government has been upgrading itself as people are demanding it. I am sure the day is not far that it will be assumed that all A grade primary school will be AC. This will positively impact the academic performance of the students in the medium term, more than any other improvement in the school infrastructure.

Childhood Obesity : A life-long problem?

Obesity is recognised as the number 1 health problem in US. This is part of lifestyle diseases which come with the improvement of income combined with an unhealthy lifestyle. Primary reasons are not using up all the calories that one consumes, eating junk food and having less exercise.

Few people have been able to reduce weight and stay fit once they are diagnosed with morbid obesity. 10 out of 100 obese people have been able reduce weight and 1 out of those 10 stayed away from obesity for more than 5 years.

Obesity is going to be a bigger cause of death than smoking. However addiction to smoking was easy to control, how can you monitor and control addiction to eating? It was found out that smoking if started before the age of 18 was almost impossible to get rid of, so selling cigarettes to minors was prohibited. Can you tell ice cream vendors to stop selling ice cream to fat children? Brain behaves same way whether its sugar or cocaine addiction.

Just like smoking if a child is obese most probably he will be obese when he becomes an adult. So urban families need to get awareness about obesity and ensure that children don’t fall into its trap at a young age.

Should developing countries like India and China worry? Yes. Chinese have a 1 child policy. The growing GDP is ensuring that mothers nurture their children too well. In the process they become fat. About 10% of children under 12 are obese in China. It would be difficult for such children to lead a healthy adult life.

We need to take care of children’s weight. India is passing through a phase where number of children per family is falling and moving nearer to China. The family’s disposable income is rising and so is fast food options available to them. All the elements of leading to an obesity epidemic are present. A little carelessness may lead to large scale obese children.

Till now India’s textbooks deal with malnutrition and balanced diet. By any criteria the number of malnourished children outnumber the potential obese children. So government cannot make the same kind of textbook applicable for entire board. The differentiation of instruction has to be done at teacher level where they have to make students aware the thin line of difference between malnourishment and obesity.

A parent can help by feeding their children home cooked food and incorporating physical activities in their everyday life. I am sure that if there is enough awareness among parents and children we can keep childhood obesity out of the country so that our future is fit!

Rich or Poor: You have to study in Charitable trust run Schools

So if you may be as rich as Mukesh Ambani but unless some benevolent person has started a school under a charitable trust there is no chance that you get your child educated. No matter how high the fees are or how good the facilities are; all schools in India are by law required to be run under “charitable trust” or section 25 company (which means its not for profit). These charitable trust cannot make profit and whatever surplus they have has to be reinvested in the objectives of the trust.

It doesn’t matter how much fees the school charges or the facilities it provides. The school may be in a congested city area or it can be far in a remote village. Wherever it is the formation of the entity has to be “not for profit”. There is a small except though- in the state of Haryana alone there is no such requirement. The schools there can be for profit and run by companies / individuals / partnerships. There are a few high end schools which have world class facilities which are based in Gurgaon.

Such entities are exempt from Income Tax provided that it spends all of the surplus earned in the same year (or the very next) there is no income tax to be paid. The Income tax authorities are debating why a school which serves to the rich should be exempt from income tax. An international board with all AC classrooms caters to Bollywood starts in Mumbai which charges Rs. 10 lakhs per annum. So should it be given tax exemption?  However any such move will be unconstitutional and will take a long time to be implemented.

Is it good to have such a law in India?

Both. Good because education is a difficult to measure service and unless its heavily regulated there can be a major cheating. Parents are unable to judge what is proper for their child and may get brainwashed with a lot of advertisements.

A counter argument that it is bad to run school “not for profit” is that it keeps investments low. Any investor would want to invest in a place where he can get return of money and income. If you donate money to a trust, there is no returning back. The money is gone for ever. This leads to shortage of good schools in the long run.

I don’t know what the right answer to this problem is. But one thing we all know for sure is that making a good school requires a lot of money and without attracting crores of investment in this sector we cannot provide high quality education to the masses. 

How much time do you spend in classroom?

By the time an average person post graduates and joins the work force reaches about 25 years of age. Professionals like doctors, chartered accountants take a few more years to join the work force full time. Of these learning years how much time does it go inside the classroom?

Stage of Education	Number of Years	Working Days	Number of hours	Total hours spent in classroom
Pre-School	3	200	4	2,400
School (1 to 12)	12	200	6	14,400
Graduation College	3	180	6	3,240
Post-Graduation	2	180	4	1,440
Total hours spent in the campus till completion of education:				21,480

By 25 years the total number of hours a person has lived is 2,19,000 hours. So less than 10% time of a person’s life is spent on the campus. Time at campus doesn’t equal to time in classroom. Exams, out of classroom activities, picnics, free periods, absence and “bands” even further reduce the hours by 1% - 2%. 

So by the time a person starts to work he is spending about 8.5% of his life inside the classroom. It is surprising that vast majority believe that education mostly happens in the classroom even though they spend so little time inside the classroom. There is abundant evidence that formal schooling and classroom method delivers best results. However it is wrong to think that education happens only in classrooms.

Experience is the best teacher.

Much more than classroom humans learn out of experiencing things. So field trips – general reading – social interactions and pursuing one’s interest are much more productive than mere classroom education.

 I am not saying that classroom education is not important or required. I am saying its not enough. Relying on schools and colleges to build a career for your child expecting too much. Remember it only can motivate child to learn for the rest of his life. So what can a parent do in the remaining time?

A simple way is to give variety of experiences. Visit to historic museums along with learning about history will make the topic interesting. Zoo and aquariums teaches more about science if guided in proper manner. Actually growing a plant can teach a lot of science than text book picture of different stages of plant life.

Real world experience or real world requirement of education is a much bigger force than making them sit in class and teach.

Will Tablets Replace Books in Schools?

Tablet PC is a device which is somewhere in between a laptop and a mobile phone. It weighs about 1 kg and run popular software. iPad is one of the world’s more successful tablet PC and several companies have their products in the market competing with iPad, still 75% market share is of iPad.

Many technology fans thought that one iPad – costing about Rs. 25,000 each- could replace school textbooks, notebooks and workbooks. This would lighten the bag load and help students work faster, smarter.  The cost will be definitely high if we consider that iPad would need to be changed every year, but if it lasts more than 3 years it would be affordable even to Indian middle class.  

Taking this approach LAUSD – Los Angeles Unified School District- bought iPads worth $ 1.3 billion – Rs. 8600 crore. This program got the best hardware, directly from iPad manufacturer, Apple. Since its launch in April 2010 it has been getting a lot of attention. It practically gave birth to tablet PC industry. Selling about 2.6 crore units till now it is supposed to be a very successful device in history.  They also loaded the iPads with the best software from Pearson. It would help teachers teach effectively and students can do homework on the iPad. The program miserably failed. The FBI is currently investigating it whether there was any irregularity in the purchase decision.  The prime question in the investigation is, was this requirement driven by vendor or did the staff really required the technology?

So will Tablet PC ever replace textbooks in schools?

Let us get into the need of tablet PC. The school bag is heavy and tablets can reduce that. Humans can carry upto 20% of their body weight. School bags have sometimes 33% of body weight because of two major reasons – underweight children and unnecessary things in the bag. Now if we don’t address the malnutrition problem of underweight children, tablet PC is not going to be the solution. Moreover if students still bring unnecessary things to school which needs to be solved.

Having a tablet PC for each child will help him show richer media to study. Actual photos, animation, audio, video can help grasp the concept faster. However along with the good things come a big problem, distraction. Unfortunately with so much content loaded on the tablet PC which the child can easily access the concentration is affected, affecting the studies.

Looking to the above it seems difficult in near future that tablets will enter the classroom.

IT in Education: Parent Relations

An average sized school has about 1500 students, and about 2500 parents. To maintain cordial relations with each individual over 15 years (Nursery to Std 12) is an important task for a school Regular communication with so many individuals is not be possible without the use of IT.

Use of IT is done in several ways by a school to get the information across to the parent. Modern schools have emails and computers for each teacher. The parents are free to write to teachers and teachers are free to reply back. Parents can even write to Principal and Management. Some schools ensure a 2 working day response time to all emails. Several schools send weekly updates of their child’s progress over email, sometimes with photos.

Facebook is becoming a boon for school managements worldwide. The school posts their activities and updates on their own Facebook page. Parents see their children’s photos on such pages almost instantaneously. At times these updates are so fast that before the child returns home from the school, parents would have seen the photo of the activity they have done at the school. More so the parents like and comment on the update. This gives a feedback to school on what activities were liked and what were disliked.

Maintaining an up to date website is one of the best investment for marketing which the school can do for providing information to new and prospective parents. Printing a prospectus and charging for it is an outdated concept. Today’s school gets parents inquiries from across the world and before shifting to a particular city parents search for schools online. Hence using IT schools can market themselves across the world.

An important development which has helped school reducing communication time and cost is the WhatsApp. Most parents who can afford quality education for the child have smart phones. These parents are added on a “Broadcast” list and school can send messages to parents faster and cheaper. This kind of system is usually used in case of emergencies like closure of school due to rains, riots or any unforeseen circumstances. Also many parents use this medium to get small information they need from the school. The best part is that its one way communication so parents if they respond to messages send by school, only the school gets them, other parents are not aware.

WhatsApp groups also help parents. They are usually created by mothers themselves of particular class are helping to share information especially in younger classes where the students are not talking to each other from home. They are two way communication so if one mother writes something, others can read it.

All these technologies increase parent’s involvement in child’s education and also assures to the parents that the school is taking right care of the child.

IT in education: Back office systems

Imagine your school and you would imagine the classroom. That’s where student spends most of his time at the school. But behind the scenes there is a lot more to a school than classrooms. Apart from SMART board not much Information Technology (IT) has entered the classroom. But there is also a staffroom and admin room. IT has crept into those rooms since long and has shown considerable improvement in manpower productivity and improvements.

Take for instance mark sheets. Earlier the “report cards” were handwritten. Now CBSE schools have complex mark sheet which has a formula to derive annual marks based on the child’s performance in exams held during the year. Made manually these mark sheets would have a high chance of errors. It would take more time for marksheet preparation than paper correction if done manually. So IT has come to the rescue and most mark sheets of CBSE schools are generated by software.

Certain schools have automated the routine process of attendance taking to such a level that if the child is not present in the school the parent gets an SMS in 30 minutes of school getting started. This prevents school bunking and timely steps in case of an untoward incidence. Some schools give automated weekly reports over email about their child’s attendance in comparison with the class, for parents to evaluate how much the child is attending school.

Data gathered by such software can be subject to varied analysis. Like correlation of attendance to academic performance, if we just put the above mentioned data together. Software can used to track child’s height and weight increase as compared to the class. So in case the child is falling behind, parents can be alerted timely.  

An important use of IT is in evaluating answer sheets. OMR – Optical Mark Reader – is one such innovation which has helped evaluation of million plus candidates in matter of weeks, with much less errors than manual paper checking. Of course the next evolution in assessment is Online Testing where candidates give tests on computers and get assessed immediately. SAT, GMAT, GRE are examples of such tests for getting admissions to colleges in US. It is well accepted practice in developed countries since more than 2 decades.

Several schools have adopted various mediums to keep in touch with parents for day to day syllabus covered in the class. This helps students who are absent to catch up immediately and also helps inattentive students to stay on track. Some schools have adopted App based communication while others have created their own portals. From these communication mediums, additional worksheets, circulars and marks are also distributed.

Thus we can see that technology has started playing a vital role in school education even though it has limited application in the classroom. 

IT in Education: Has it increased productivity?

We have experienced exponential growth of use of information technology (IT) in all sectors of economy. The concept of “core banking” software revolutionised banking sector. Earlier you could encash your cheque from only your branch in which you had the account. Software connected all the branches and then you can withdraw from any branch. Such software enabled the implementation of ATM.

Stock market were like fish markets. Now they are all sophisticated with use of computers, internet and complex software. We can deal with any stock from any part of the world, only barrier being the time zone.

Travel booking, be it airline, train, hotel, sight-seeing or restaurant searching, everything can be done online and at flick of a button. You can compare thousands of options from the comfort of your bedroom.

In all these sectors implementation of technology has brought the costs down. The reason is very simple, it has increase manpower productivity by leaps and bounds. Today a private bank has about 3 times the market capitalisation per employee than a public sector bank. This is due to the better implementation of technology (apart from better management skill). 

Education sector has still not been able to reap dividends of IT. 20 years ago CBSE has 40 children per class and 1 teacher to teach. Even today the productivity per teacher is same. Each class requires one teacher and 6 hours when the students are there in the school, some or the other teacher has to be present.

This is not a problem in India alone. It’s a worldwide problem. We have SMART boards for teachers, so they can be more effective at teaching. We have computer generated marksheets, question paper, worksheets, but teacher’s role in the classroom is not eliminated. At best the teacher can make PPT and reuse it whenever the same topic is taught in the future. This does not decrease the manpower cost, just improves the classroom attention span if at all.

Thus contrary to other sectors, cost of education has not decreased with the implementation of IT. What has improved is quality of education. Today we can show amoeba classroom in motion at a flick of a button. We can show an animation of photosynthesis or a human blood circulation system so students can understand it clearly and faster. History becomes more interesting with colour photos, audio speeches, old videos.

Today’s children have exposure to a richer mediums like TV, Radio and computers at home. While studying they get to use both side of brains for faster learning through use of IT. Hence students have benefitted a lot with the implementation of technology in education even when cost of education has not decreased. 

A Fast Developing India Puts Load On The Schooling System

A school before 2 decades used to be a building with classrooms, staffrooms and a principal’s cabin. There used to be missionary schools, government schools and school run in the name of some trust or a particular philanthropic individuals. Many schools used to propagate religion as they were funded by religious trust, government schools focussed on reaching to grassroots for public programs, education and child development used to be second priority for them.

Schools since last few years are different. Across India we are seeing secular schools becoming more popular. Government schools are too much involved in election duty for teachers, health drive, food program and various “abhiyans” for government. While they are very good vehicles to drive those benefits to the hinterlands, urban parents dream that if they earn little more they would send their child to a non-government school.

A modern school is these days is popular are totally different. They don’t just teach what is in the textbook. Finishing curriculum in time is regarded as a basic responsibility. A lot of responsibilities have been added. 

Today’s school is expected to teach computers. So one full subject added to about 10 years of child’s time at school. Earlier one period of PE / PT (physical education or training) used to be the norm. Now schools have Yoga, Badminton, Table Tennis, Lawn Tennis, Cricket, Skating, Basketball, Football, Swimming, etc. or during different academic years. There is a company which teaches sports as a curriculum, about 500 schools are their client imparting sports education to around 4 lakh students across India.

Periods like life skills, library, maths lab, and language lab are part of a high end school’s timetable which gives break to students from the monotony of academic subject periods one after the other. Health check-ups used to be merely height and weight, now it includes dental and eye exam also.

The number of working days and the number of hours of the school have remained the same and so has been the depth of the academic curriculum. So why has the scenario changed so much?

Indian economy is growing but now the country is developing also. Mere growth would mean increase in incomes of families. But development on the other hand would mean that these income translate to an increase in standard of living. The parents are expecting an “all round” development of their child, which something they missed during their childhood. Getting a top score in board exam is not the ONLY priority for the parents. Becoming a good sportsperson, an artist, skilled at technology are few other expectation of parents. Rather than becoming an expert parents are wanting their children to be a great human being.

APJ Abdul Kalam: The ‘Extra’ Ordinary Man

Looking back at the life story of a man who was one of the most influential leaders of India in recent times, we realise something we all know but ignore. He had absolutely no financial backing. His father was not famous in the village. He was in minority and was also not a bright student in his school days. He was just “average” student even in college. He was warned in college that his scholarship would be stopped, eventually ended up doing a job he was not very keen to do, yet he became a top scientist of India.  So what was his secret?

We all know that as a President of India he was very humble, down to earth and a simple person. What we do not know that even when he was a president, he was hard working. At all levels in life he worked more than his peers and hence progressed more. As an average student he worked to distribute newspapers and still put in more work in his studies so he could get scholarship. In college he worked hard to get a good job. After he got a job we all know about his involvement in making helicopters, missiles, satellites, nuclear test, etc. Yes he was a genius, probably he always was gifted and the Indian school system couldn’t recognise that. However, more than being a genius he was extremely hardworking. This hard work has made him the leader our country is so proud of.

There is nothing called ‘lazy genius’. I have come across a lot of people who say I am so intelligent that I have to work hard. I am afraid that if you want to be successful in life, you have to work hard, irrespective of your level of intelligence. In fact APJ Abdul Kalam has proved that you can change your level of intelligence by putting your blood and sweat in your work. He was not from an extraordinary school, but the efforts he has put in his building his career and his country are so extraordinary that he has become a leader only on merit.

Hard work teaches you humility. I have had the opportunity to meet him twice and his humility and kindness were something that cannot be taught, only developed. In one of the speeches he mentioned that once he was sure of the project being successful as he and his team had worked very hard for 2 years. There were top people in the team with adequate resources, but it failed. He did not give up on hard work and 6 months later they were successful.

A simple person with absolutely no background has today left this world by creating a reputation which is unparalleled. He has proved that India with her share of one of the largest poor population in the world has the potential of producing the most brilliant scientists of the world. 

Waiting for an Iron Man

Most people would remember the Hollywood character when they read Iron Man. However I am talking about our own Sardar Patel, who made India by merging 565  princely states and creating a united country which today is all set to become the 3^rd largest economy in the world.

What primary and secondary education in India today needs is one such Iron Man who can unite the country’s multi-board system. India as of now has approximately 30 recognised boards. While most have difficulty in choosing which board is best for their child would have option to choose between :

1.      State Board

2.      CBSE

3.      ICSE

4.      IGCSE

5.      IB

However even more difficult is the college’s role where they are getting marksheets from 30 different boards who have different marking styles / different subjects / different dates of result. Then comes entrance exams – one by state govt and another by central govt. So in Ahmedabad if you want to get in to engineering you need to do GujCET for admission in to LD Engineering and JEE for  Nirma University. Not to mention for IIT you need to pass JEE – Advanced. So the child has to study for atleast 3 exams, board exam, state entrance test and central entrance test. It may seem that the curriculum is similar, but definitely the exam pattern is different.  

The government tried to do a common entrance test for across India and suggested that admissions to be done based on that results. However students stopped attending schools and focussed on getting score only in the exam.So the government has put a 40% to 60% weightage to board marks before giving admission. So that again puts us back to square one – how do you compare the different marksheets of different boards. Another system which has been made by colleges is allotting quota system. So they find a ratio of total students of the board who appeared for admission (or passed in the board exam) and make allocate their seats accordingly. However this does benefit boards in which there are students who wouldn’t want to pursue college education.

 To streamline these boards the National Curriculum Framework was setup in 2005 however till date not all boards have adopted it. What we require is a “National Assessment Framework” as eventually we should produce comparable marksheets. Then we will be able to decide who are the best brains in the country to get in to best colleges irrespective of the state he is studying in.

Doesn’t future of the country deserve a better way to get into colleges?

USA has implemented SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) since 1926 and even today most colleges use GPA (grade point average) allotted by school exam and SAT scores in combination to give admission to colleges. This also helps international students to sit at par with US students. This is how lot of Indian students get admitted in US, while face injustice in India. No doubt Indians spend about $13 billion for college education in US.  

We need one Iron Man – Sardar Patel to unite all the educational boards and colleges and make India one of the world’s best place to study.

Reward behaviour not Result

Reward is something which we associate with achievement. Most people think reward is only supposed to be given when a person tries AND achieve something. The fallacy of this thinking is that most people give up their journey towards the achievement because of losing of hope that they will ever reach there. For example I have to learn to walk for say 6 kms in  1 hour. At present I can walk for maximum 30 minutes and cover 2.5 kms. So a good trainer would give me a program which has several milestones which need to be achieved and say in a 3 month plan I can achieve the ultimate goal. A good trainer would give small rewards for small achievements and help the trainee to keep up the motivation all throughout the journey. These small rewards will increase the probability of achievement more than a one-time big reward.

This approach can be put in practice by teachers, parents, students and even managers. For example there is a students who has bad handwriting, lack of subject knowledge, no punctuality and somewhat disciplinary issue. Most parents and teachers would want the student to immediately change and give him an offer a big reward if his performance is like an average student. However for a student with several challenges the rewards should be broken up in small pieces and given for him maintaining a positive behaviour. A student is about a million times more probable to improve himself if he keeps on trying to do so every single day for years and years, than a student who does sporadic efforts. If we see that a students is struggling hard to improve, this alone calls for a small reward.

I love giving medals, prizes and rewards to final winners. However the futility of that exercise is proven when year on year we have the same winners. I think rewards should be for improvement with one self’s past performance. Rewards should be for each individuals battle against his own circumstances. Rewards should be for attitude rather than aptitude. Such rewards will build a character, a fighter, an individual- what a world really needs. Rather than merely a winner, which is a title reserved for one person.

Such kind of small rewards have to be “administered” by people close to the students, like parents, friends and teachers. A single metric cannot be established to give such a reward. For example a student who got a fractured foot and still getting the same marks as he got in previous exams, even when his classmates performance fell, deserves a reward. A computer generated rank list will not give importance to such a struggle.

Small rewards can be simple pleasures of life like giving an ice cream treat to the child which he/she has been yearning for, taking him to his/her favourite movie or sometimes just spending time with him to do what he/she likes. Positive words of encouragement and a simple pat on the back are also rewards for the strugglers.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate, reward the behaviour and not the result. A good result may come by good luck, but a good behaviour comes only with a positive attitude and persistent efforts.  Behaviour builds a solid foundation for the future which is more important in the long run than merely cracking an exam.  

Keep up the good work!

Impact of GST on the Common Man

Any regulation change in taxation usually either means more taxes or difficult procedure. Either ways such kind of change in regulation is usually opposed by people. However the proposed Goods and Service Tax regulation is aimed at simplifying the current taxation structure and reduce the cost of total tax borne by end user. Convenience to the honest tax payer and disincentivising the tax evaders are two major benefits of this method of taxation.

To explain in a nutshell, when you purchase goods from one state you pay sales tax (CST) and when you  sell that goods in another state you have to pay VAT again. So there is a “double taxation” of the same goods and of the same transaction as you do not get credit of tax already paid. What GST aims at is in the above situation you have to pay tax only on the increase in sales value and you get the credit of the tax you have paid while purchasing.

Biggest benefit will be that multiple taxes like  central sales tax, excise duty, service tax state sales tax, entry tax, entertainment tax, luxury tax, turnover tax etc., will no longer be present and all that will be brought under the GST. Apart from the avoidance of double taxation the biggest benefit is to reduction of compliance costs. The paper work is going to be reduced as there will be single authority to file returns, assessments and appeals. So unproductive work like maintaining separate records, meeting different consultants and complying with different departments will be reduced.

This is a tremendous benefit to any size of business and in particular National players. These tax savings eventually get passed on to consumers. Moreover small businessmen will get input credit of taxes they pay on varied services. As of now Service Tax paid was not used as a credit for payment towards Central Sales Tax. However in GST you can take benefit of service tax paid on telephone bills, AC service charge, computer AMC, Internet expense etc.

Doing Business now will be easier and more comfortable as various hidden taxations will not be present. Starting a new business will be easier and hence the consumers will have the luxury of multiple choices for whichever goods or services he wants. This automatically keeps prices in check and ensure that the benefits of decreased taxes be passed on to the end users.

The rate of tax may seem high and for the first year end consumer may have to pay higher tax, however after the first year the tax burden will reduce. Combined with increased competition, no double taxation and reduced paperwork – end user is definitely going to reap the dividends.

Overall GST is the change India needs today to see a better tomorrow.