A total 114 villages in Odisha have been declared child-marriage free as of January 7 2020 and many more are in line.
But this story of change began in a village named Rugudipali in west Odisha’s Subarnapur district with support from the courageous Gitanjali Rana, an anganwadi worker in the area.
Action Aid, a non-profit that works on child and women’s rights, has been spearheading the campaign against child marriage with the support of UNICEF in 15 districts of Odisha with a high burden of child marriage as indicated by the previous National Family Health Survey.
Gitanjali participated in some of these sensitisation programmes over the last few years. As a frontline worker, these workshops to strengthen the institutional mechanism to prevent child marriages gave her the interest and ability to do something different.
Thus, when the 15-year-old granddaughter of villager Gyana Rana approached her and shared that she was being pressured to give up her studies and get married, Gitanjali encouraged her to follow her dreams and stood beside her.
Gitanjali had already discussed the idea of making her village child-marriage free. She said, gave her courage to interact with families and community leaders against child marriage. She also learnt the procedures to intervene and stop a child marriage and mobilise the villagers to become an ally against the social evil.
In the case of Gyana Rana’s granddaughter as well, Gitanjali tried to convince the girl’s family against marrying her off. She made them aware of the negative impacts of the practice on mental and physical health of a girl child.
Initially, the she faced opposition from all fronts but that is in the past. Today, the girl and many others like her in this village are continuing their studies.
No child marriages have been solemnised in the year 2019. On January 6 2020, Rugudipalli was declared ‘child-marriage free’. They have also vowed not to allow underage marriages ever again.
The villagers have gone a step further to create enabling environment for adolescents so that they can continue their education and pursue a career of their choice. This will ultimately strengthen their voices to say no to child marriage.
A total of 962 villages in Subarnapur district have so far pledged to end child marriage.
At the event to declare Rugudipali child-marriage free, Monisha Banerjee, collector and district magistrate of Subarnapur, said, “It is not an easy task to change the mindset of people to let the girls make decisions regarding their marriage. Creation of social responsibility is required to enable girls to fulfil their dreams.”
She urged this endeavour to be taken forward as a campaign in the district and to declare more such villages as child-marriage free. After Rugudipali, 12 more villages from the district joined this list.
On June 12 2020, the Women & Child Development and Mission Shakti Department of Odisha shared the incident of Rugudipali as a success story with all the district collectors.
The effort was appreciated by stating that the Subarnapur district administration has taken an innovative step in convergence action to make the community responsible to prevent child marriage. The department also requested all the collectors to take similar steps.
The Women & Child Development and Mission Shakti Department launched the State Strategic Action Plan in October 2019 to end child marriage with an objective to make Odisha child-marriage free by 2030.
Persistent efforts to motivate parents, influential persons, communities not to marry their girls before the legal age worked. As a result, there is no child marriage in the village Rugudipali and now subsequently in other 113 villages.
A lot of effort has gone in putting the girls back in school and engage them in skill development programmes. These stories of courage are now reaching other parts of the state and encouraging them to make their villages child-marriage free. The little step by Rugudipalli villagers is paving the way in making it possible.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.