Reforms in Tax Administration

[This is an excerpt of my speech at the Central Excise Day Celebration published by Chief Commissioners of Central Excise and Service Tax Mumbai and Western India Regional Council of The Institute of Chartered Accounts of India. February 2014]

The fundamental role of tax department always has been to raise revenue for the government. Over the recent past there has been fundamental shift in the working of tax administration. Tax administration is attempting see its role as an enabler in helping the citizen to comply with the tax laws than an enforcer extracting funds. Thus it has been trying to achieve balance both in taxpayer service and in enforcement. Towards this it has to give equal importance to making tax avoidance painful and making tax compliance easy.

Today’s rapidly changing environment is adding further complexities in tax administration. Growth in international trade and commerce driven by globalisation is a major contributor to this complexity. Goods and services are produced in one country using inputs from a number of other countries and consumed in a third set of countries. The management and ownership of these entities are also spread across the world. Identifying the taxability and fair computation of taxes become a cumbersome and complicated matter. 

The other challenge is related to taxing of online transactions. With the trade happening completely in the virtual world there is a need to revise and refine the laws and rules for fair tax computation and easy and practical enforcement. Similarly, the development of tax shelter products and use of tax havens is another challenge, which emanates from globalization. The new technology solutions and boundaryless commerce open new avenues of frauds and tax evasions to the unscrupulous

Tax Reform has to be seen from this paradigm shift in landscape.

There are various factors that should be taken into account in this reform process They include:

a.      Simple tax system to facilitate administration and reduce compliance cost: It has been proven across the world that simple tax systems will improve compliance and make tax administration more efficient. A simple tax system will have few taxes, limited number of rates for each tax and limited exemptions. Forms and Procedures would be simple. Information required on tax forms would be kept to a minimum and readily available from taxpayer’s books and records. Taxpayers, to the extent possible, may not be asked to present data that would require them to keep special records for tax purposes.

b.      Taxpayer Communication: A well thought out communication strategy is a key element of taxpayer service by making information available to and addressing concerns of the taxpayers and business community

Objectives of Communication Strategy: The broad objectives are           

                                                          i.             Complete coverage: Ensure communication reaches all potential taxpayers

                              ii.           Uniform understanding: Ensure there is uniform understanding of  Laws and compliance across all taxpayers

                                 iii.             Mobilise taxpayers community for registration and voluntary compliance by preparing an environment to overcome  apprehensions at the taxpayer’s end

                                               iv.            Sustain the momentum: Reassure and amplify positive experiences of registration and voluntary compliance to interest and excite large taxpayer community to follow suit

Channels: Today multiple channels are available to reach the citizen. The department should have a well thought out strategy to use these multiple channels instead of just limiting to statutory publication in official communiques..

In addition there should be a channel to provide reliable answers to frequently asked queries and doubts that would be generated by the public awareness campaign

c.       Taxpayer Service: The quality of taxpayer service will be a significant determinant of the taxpayer compliance. Taxpayer services shall adopt a customer centric approach and shall foster to establish the following:

                                            i.             Consistency of service between what is expected by taxpayer and what is perceived by tax authority.

                               ii.             Translation of service expectations into service specifications

                                                iii.             Adherence to service specifications consistently during service delivery

                             iv.             Consistency of service delivery with taxpayer communications

The elements of taxpayer service will include:

Taxpayer Rights and Obligations: Taxpayers rights and obligations and the procedures for redressal of their grievances could be explicitly declared and published and adequately communicated

Ease in compliance: The policies, forms and procedures relating to compliances could be easy to understand and easy to comply with.

                                             i.      All key administrative processes including the procedure for taxpayer registration, tax payment, filing of tax returns/ grievances/ appeals and applications for rulings etc could be automated, reducing the need for manual intervention by the taxpayer and the tax administration to the barest minimum.

                                                ii.     The tax department should allow taxpayers opportunities to provide feedback relating to administrative policies and procedures.

                         iii.      The department could continuously strive to refine administrative processes from the Taxpayers’ perspective so as to minimise compliance burden

Service Level Standards: The department could publish service standards with respect to various services to taxpayers like assessment, grievance resolution, refunds and be accountable to honour these service standards. The extent to which these levels are achieved may be made a part of performance measurement for the department and it may be made available in public domain.

Reliable and up- to-date taxpayer information

                                                              i.      Provide taxpayer information (self)services – a real-time convenient online login-based secure access to taxpayer on its registration details (e.g., legal full name, physical address, date of incorporation, industrial sector), tax payment history, status of returns, refunds, etc, specific communications from the department  and with an online facility for query and grievance handling.

                                                            ii.      Up-to-date information relating to law, procedures and regulations could be made readily available to taxpayers in a simple and coherent manner through a mix of identified channels including online modes.

                                                          iii.      The department could consistently deliver quality information and respond to inquiries and requests from taxpayers in an accurate and timely fashion to  help  them meet  their obligations;

                                                           iv.      The department could aim to resolve Taxpayer queries at the first point of contact, avoiding the need for subsequent contacts on the same subject

Assured confidentiality and privacy of taxpayer information

                                                              i.      The department should use taxpayer information only to the extent permitted by law;

                                                            ii.      Privacy of taxpayer information will  be  protected  to  a  level consistent with the standards applicable to comparable public and private sector organisations such as banks

Time bound Grievance redressal A Grievance Redressal Mechanism to be made available to taxpayers for time bound redressal of grievances.

Education: Continuous education of various stakeholders is critical for any tax administration. Therefore it is imperative to have a focused effort in educational initiatives that creates an ecosystem to help augment the department’s capacity to maximise the outreach.

Certification Program: The department could consider establishing a certification with programs tailored for finance professionals responsible for tax compliance, tax agents etc. This will help in ensuring a certain level of learning and provide a bench mark to measure level of expertise.

d.      Enforcement and Compliance Management: Simple tax system, ease of compliance, self-assessment and high quality taxpayer service will make compliance painless and incentivize compliance. Equally important are means to make non-compliance painful which is an equally important lever for better compliance.

                                            i.      A robust compliance management mechanism will identify the risks associated with non-compliance, and strategies should be developed to mitigate and counter those risks.

                                          ii.      These may involve interventions by way of profiling risk, auditing, developing third-party information sources, general anti-avoidance efforts, prosecution and proposals for legislative change.

                                        iii.      The department should monitor compliance activity to detect and deter noncompliance.

Development of information system to counter risk to revenue

A well designed information system with the provision to receive and integrate financial data from diverse sources and develop risk profiles using data mining and other profiling techniques will be the main feature of compliance risk management strategy. The department could take steps to integrate the taxpayer data in different tax systems. It could also take steps to identify data sources in public domain and define legal framework to access to key third Party information (like database of ministries/departments dealing with corporate affairs in the country, relevant databases of regulatory authorities in the sectors of interest, etc)

Tackling Tax Fraud

The department could adopt a zero tolerance policy for tax frauds. For this purpose it should-

                                 i.            Design and implement efficient strategies to deal with organised tax evasion and fraud and prosecute under criminal law persons found involved in fraudulent activities. In such cases it will use powers of search of business premises and arrest of suspects.

                               ii.            Tax frauds require specialised multi-disciplinary investigation skills including tax investigations, computer forensics, and criminal investigations etc. Therefore, the department may set up specialised Enforcement Unit having the necessary skill sets for investigation into tax fraud and recovery of difficult tax debt.

                              iii.            The findings of investigations into tax frauds could also be used for re-determination and recovery of evaded tax liabilities.

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e.      People In the current environment with fast-paced change in the business domain and technology tools it is important that the department has cohesive strategy to attract, develop and retain resources with the relevant skill set so as to provide competent and trained managers and staff with high professional and ethical standards. It should also provide continuous skill up-gradation of its employees. This could  to a great extent limit incentives and opportunities for rent seeking and inappropriate behaviour

Emphasis will have to be placed on proper and continual training and development of the personnel for achieving professional competence for dealing with the complex issues in the legal landscape. Training programs should lay emphasis on behavioural aspects involved in dealing with taxpayers with courtesy, fairness, and consideration..

The tax administration thus should evaluate these dimensions on a regular basis and reform the tax administration if it has to stay relevant and effective. 

Making the Elephant Dance

We once had a government that tried to do everything by itself. In addition to the business of governance, it also actively dabbled in bread making to aircraft production and banking to hotels.  Over a period of time it has accepted that it should focus on its core responsibility of governance and has attempted to move out from non-core sectors. Therefore it has, in the recent past, started using private sector capital and private sector involvement to augment and strengthen governance and to provide public good

Some of these partnerships have been successes and some failures.  The success and failure of such joint initiatives depend on many factors.  The willingness of the key bureaucrats driving the project to take bold decisions and the scruples of the private sector partner are two critical factors of success.

The worst combination is when we have an indecisive officer and a scrupulous service provider. In this case the project will suffer and the service provider will suffer humongous loss. This is the reason why many private sector companies desist from working for government.

The next worst combination is when we have an officer who is decisive and absolutely corrupt teaming with an unscrupulous service provider. In this case they will clean the tills and the project will suffer.

The best result is when there is combination of decisive and result oriented officer and scrupulous service provider.  This is a road fraught with risks because this will involve judgement calls and judgement calls involve calculated risks based on information available at that point of time. But unfortunately these judgment calls often are often misinterpreted. This then leads to both parties being accused of the personal agenda behind their actions.  They get equated to the worst combination described above. Both end up suffering for the decisions they have taken. That is why this is a rare combination. However what we need today is this combination.  

This is less of an issue when outcomes of the envisaged projects are very clear and the scope of private sector participation can be articulated un-ambiguously. In these cases it will be possible to develop a clear contract and monitor the performance against the clear milestones in the contract. However in projects which are transformative in nature this becomes all the more critical. In this kind of project it will not be very easy to clearly develop the implementation plan and identify clear milestones. Therefore there will be many occasions, based on ground realities, when judgement calls are required to be made and course corrections are required to be effected. In such cases the combination of visionary and courageous leadership from the government and scruples of the service provider becomes very critical. 

In typical government procurement such a combination which will effectively enable active management will be very difficult to implement. This is the reason why many of the transformative projects in Private Public Participation fail.

This is especially true for IT projects. Today many top-notch IT companies are unwilling to work with government because they feel that government does not understand or appreciate this dimension. On account of this blindness on the part of the government buyer, for honest service providers government projects are loss leaders. Especially with the alternate business opportunities recovering around the world it will be difficult for the government to to attract good IT companies to take serious interest in the e-enablement of government projects.

The most effective way to handle such transformative projects is to carve these as independent projects and hand these over to a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which has been suitably structured with sufficient flexibility to take nimble decisions and relevant mid-course corrections when needed. It is also important to have the right kind of leadership, team with relevant expertise and experience and also a supervisory body that recognizes the different approach needed for these SPVs to succeed. Especially the leadership vision and courage to take decisions will be very critical.  Delhi Metro is a very visible example of a successive implementation in this model.

There are many more transformative ideas that are awaiting such interventions especially in the area of digital transformation. We hope that the clear mandate the government has this time will help them take this path with more confidence. 

“Planning is helpful. If you don’t know what you want, you’ll seldom get it. But, no matter how well you plan, you will fare better if you expect the unexpected. The unexpected, by nature, comes unseen, unthought, unenvisioned. All you can do is plan to go unplanned, prepare to be unprepared, make going with the flow part of your agenda, for the most successful among us envision, plan, and prepare, but cast all aside as needed, while those who are unable to go with the flow often suffer, if they survive.”   David W. Jones, Moses and Mickey Mouse

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“The AAP Effect”

The election season in India is on. One of the novel feature of this election is the impact of newly formed Aam Admin Party (AAP) in the political landscape.

The most significant achievement of AAP is the speed in which this party has come to so much of attention and relevance in the political process. It is too early to conclude its ability to reach positions of power and to hold on to it on the basis of what it delivers. However it has made significant contributions to the democracy in India.

Firstly it managed to shake up the established parties and their leaders by raising a number of questions; especially relating to corruption. It reminded them that the electorate cannot be taken for granted. This shake up has to some extent brought upfront the importance of addressing corruption in public life. I don’t believe this will result in a complete clean up. But it may to bring some moderation and more seriousness about the way government manages its finances; monitoring the quality of outcomes and its benefits to the society.

Secondly it has reversed the trend of decreasing participation of the common man in the electoral process. A large cross section of the society had moved away from participation in elections and voting because they were disgusted at what they experienced and felt that there is no point in any kind of involvement.  But today we see reversal of this trend.  We see active interest among many of the former disbelievers. More importantly we see many more good and educated professionals joining the fray with a commitment to make a contribution to the society and not just for private gains.

Third contribution it has made is the passion it has ignited among the youngsters. Recently I attended a function which was primarily meant for the youth. One of the speakers asked two questions to the audience. To the question on how many have voted in any elections there were hardly any raised hands. But when they were asked how many would vote in the coming election, the majority raised their hands.  I am sure this larger participation can only mean good for the society.

Is this going to usher a new era? Are we going to see a complete clean-up of political system? While I am excited about the reversal of the trend I am not sure of the sustenance and scaling of the collection of good people to overthrow the bad. This is because the very nature of the good people has the inherent fault line that could lead to its implosion. Remember the Janata Dal which came to power soon after emergency. What a great collection of statesmen and professionals. It failed from within without completing its first term.  

I had written a blog on this problem of “Good being Bad” I have reproduced it below for convenience.

To be or not to be  –Of Good being Bad

In the first part of this article I discussed about how any system of governance will always have a mixture of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ use of the system. I have used the word “good use” and “bad use” in a figurative way. Good use is when the system is used for the larger good of the humanity and bad use naturally its opposite.

The relative proportion of good and bad in the society is determined primarily by the value system of the majority. The natural tendency of this mix is to gradually degenerate with the proportion of bad getting more and more; the bad drives out the good.

This is similar to the income distribution and its shift in a society. In a society however evenly distributed the wealth is to begin with, eventually the mix becomes skewed with smaller percentage of the society controlling larger part of wealth.

The question is not whether it will degenerate. But how long it will take! Some social shocks and scams may cause periodic correction of this degeneration and eventually the society/ civilization degenerates to its cyclical low. May be the cycle will start all over again.

One of the key contributors of this degeneration is the inaction by the good. As the proverb says; “the best thing that the bad can expect is the good to do nothing”

The greatest tragedy is that the people who want to use the system for their private agenda (let is refer to them loosely as the bad people) have some of the good traits that help them prosper and the people who want to use the system for the larger benefits of the society (let us refer to them as the good people) have some of the worst traits that weaken them. Let us take a deeper look at these qualities.

Co-operation

The bad people are generally too happy to co-operate with anybody so long as that co-operation brings them power or wealth or both.

The good people generally carry a chip of honesty on their shoulder that they seldom co-operate even with people with similar value system. They believe that their goodness is one step higher and they are ready to dump and run if the other guy doesn’t play along exactly as he feels is right. In fact they almost make such renunciation a virtue.

Courage

The bad normally has the courage and with impunity cooks the account books /investigation/ assessment or any administrative process for their gain.

The good is often scared to take bold decision and hides behind rules and technicality. The obstructive bureaucracy is often a result of such cowardliness and not just self serving actions of the bad.

Power of Interpretation

The bad will interpret laws and technicality so long it meets its end or favors an ally.

The good often tries to interpret with limited appreciation of what it stands for; by the time they finish splitting the hair it fails to be achieve any good.

Sacrifice

The bad is capable of sacrifice for what it stands for. Sacrifice its principals, society, environment and much more.

Good will hold onto technical correctness, its pride and prejudice even at the cost of its ultimate benefit to the society

Loyalty

The bad often demands and commits substantial loyalty to its partners so long as such loyalty is rewarding. They are willing invest in this loyalty for quite some time.

The good often has little commitment to his partners if it feels that their goodness is not of the same type. They are willing to abandon and run and not pull together.

Risk taking

The bad is willing to take its risk, because they see potential reward in taking risk.

The good is often too risk averse. The potential reward for sticking the neck out could be some brickbats. With no upside benefit for self and downside uncertain and costly, the good normally avoid getting involved.

Now we ask the question “How good is good”. There is a saving in our tongue which translates to “the good often bears the fruits of the bad”

I do agree there are many ‘good’ who are as good as the ‘bad’ and it is through them that we have gained anything.

What we need to do to avoid/delay of decay of our society is to develop a willingness to learn the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’, stick together and support each other for what we stand and not be a utopian island of fruitless good.

Willingness to co-operate, to take risks, to take a position, to believe in the intention of the fellow good, not to be cowed down by oppositions and mild differences in styles and not to run away to our comfort zones is what is needed today.

There is high probability that the future of AAP could end up be like this. The party is already showing signs of this internal fault line. If this happens it would be a loss to the democratic processes


"It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more" Woody Allen

“Whose loss is it anyway?”

“Vendor Lock-in” is a major concern for any buyer, especially if the product/ service procured is of high value and has long-term implication on future procurement. The concern is quite natural and justified because if the product/ technology has locked-in the buyer, it is quite possible that the seller could use this dependency to extract more than what is fair. There are quite a lot of discussions on this topic and there are quite a lot of strategies that try to address this. The mirror image of this is the “buyer- squeeze”. In this case the buyer who has significant market power can use the market power to squeeze the vendor to extent that he may really bleed to death.

One of the most classical buyers in this respect is government. This is because bureaucracies like many large organisations are designed with maintenance orientation than development orientation. One of the primary characteristics of such a design is to have policies, procedures, rules and conventions that are not adventurous, but which prevent misuse and misappropriations. Such excessively straight-jacketed systems limit opportunities for human innovation and initiative. Adding on to this is the status quo bias which is inherent in most human beings, and this encourages these organisations to resist change intensely.

Very often we hear about scams where some private vendors or service providers have connived with politicians and government servants to cut sweet deals or to circumvent due processes. What we don’t hear about or bother about are the instances when government as a buyer squeezing vendors and service providers to their extinction or resulting in poor service delivery. This behavior by the government servant could be on account of many reasons. It could be (i) to extract some private gratifications (ii) because he is too scared to take decisions (iii) to satisfy his ego trip (iv) on account of his feudal mindset (v) to prove his predecessor wrong (v) to get some brownie points from his boss and so on. Even if they don’t do such things they end up taking no decision or taking enormous time in taking any decision which is very frustrating for any result oriented person to work with.

What makes it worse is that in Government generally there is very limited dis-incentive for failure and there is limited incentive for success or even for timely completion of the project. So he has no compunction to make un-reasonable demands beyond the scope as per the contract in the name of executive exigency. He will also delay or deny payments on silly grounds. The killer weapon that he has is the threat of black-listing. In private sector if one company blacklists a vendor he needs to worry only about loss of business from that entity. But if one government department blacklists a vendor, the vendor can say good bye to all government business. This threat is often used by the bureaucracy to get their way. If not official blacklisting they may gang-up or use their influencing power to block any business of that vendor. Therefore, seldom the aggrieved parties protest or object. They pay-up or shut-up.

Most often they package their action under the garb of executive exigency. Indian law in this aspect has addressed this clearly. The judiciary has appreciated that if this is not addressed properly, some executives, with a short-term view could use this plea of executive necessity to drive his personal agenda.  The judgment by Justice P N Bhagvati who has served as the Chief Justice of India has addressed this matter lucidly in Motilal Sugar Mills case (AIR 1979 SC 621). The sheer beauty, brilliance and clarity of this judgment is amazing. "The law may therefore now be taken to be settled as a result of this decision that where the Government makes a promise knowing or intending that it would be acted on by the promises and, in fact, the promisee, acting in reliance on it, alters his position the Government would be held bound by the promise and the promise would be enforceable against the Government at the instance of the promisee, notwithstanding that there is no consideration for the promise and the promise is not recorded in the form of a formal contract as required by Article 299 of the Constitution”

He has further elaborated, “Why should the government not be held to a high "standard of rectangular rectitude while dealing with its citizens"? There was a time when the doctrine of executive necessity was regarded as sufficient justification for the government to repudiate even its contractual obligations, but let it be said to the eternal glory of this court, this doctrine was emphatically negatived in the, Indo-Afghan Agencies case and the supremacy of the rule of law was established. It was laid down by this Court that the government cannot claim to be immune from the applicability of the rule of promissory estoppel and repudiate a promise made by it on the ground that such promise may fetter its future executive action."

But unfortunately there is little compliance to this principle in real life.  Some argue that such hard bargain is for the benefit of the exchequer. But it often doesn’t. With such a tight squeeze and unfair dealing the quality of service suffer and many good people avoid/ limit doing business with the government.  Those who know how to “manage” flourish. Such an environment begets crony capitalism which is detrimental for a sustainable society. Lord Acton’s quote on power is quite relevant in this context. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who else but government has absolute power?

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. John Adams

At What Cost

All of us will agree that Result orientation and Reliability are two critical attributes of a valuable executive in any organization. These are of as important as his/her domain knowledge. Most successful and sought after executives are very high in these two attributes.  Let us call these twin attributes R&R (not Rest and Recreation of the army variety.) Although we value those who are high on R&R there are cases when these essential attributes can turn out to be the poison within that contribute to organizational decay. Let us try to understand this a little more in detail. 

Result orientation describes how a person goes about executing his work, his logic of prioritization and his problem solving.  Result oriented people will focus on the outcome expected. They do not get bogged down by the constraints and difficulties. They also do not allow themselves to be caught up with procedural cobwebs. If there is a roadblock, they will find a work around. If there is a limitation they will find an alternative. If they are confronted with a procedural Gordian knot, they will find a sword to slice it away.

Reliability is highly correlated to result orientation. But it also has some different flavor. This also portrays how he relates to the members of the team and/or other stakeholders.  It is about how a person can be depended to do what is expected of him or what he has committed. When we ask a reliable person do something, you can be sure that he will give an honest feedback on if it can be done by him, and by when. Once he commits you don’t need to follow-up. If he is faced by a problem that he can’t solve, he will let you know in time. He will also give you an assessment of the impact of what is being executed among various stakeholders.

Some exhibit R&R in all/ most of their dealings. Some of them exhibit these qualities more to their subordinates. We can term this as downward orientation. They are those who look after their team. Such people can be sure to be bosses who are admired and adored. As they rise up to in their career they turn out to be leaders who can take their team along. But some time they fail to keep their bosses in good humor their growth may get stunted; especially if their bosses are insecure by nature.

Some exhibit it more to their colleagues. This can be termed as horizontal orientation. They are excellent peers you can have. They are normally very popular in the office and office parties.

Some others are resourceful and reliable for their bosses. They have upward orientation. They are bosses favorites. They are much clued onto what their bosses want. Especially they are alive to factors that irritate their bosses and they will find ways to solve them and they are alive to their bosses weaknesses. They become almost indispensable for their bosses.

But this last variety while they are excellent in what they do may end up being poison to their organizations; especially if they don’t have respect their colleagues and are not sensitive to their preferences and concerns. They may run roughshod with their colleagues and subordinates to give what their bosses want. When boss give a guideline of his preference, normally they expect the implementing person to assess and field reality and optimize the implementation plan. But purely upward oriented R&R completely disregard constraints/ concerns and aspirations of the team. They are almost  like bulldogs. Very often others will not complain to avoid being termed a whiner.  

We need to be very careful with such people. Because, silently they vitiate the environment they belong. Because they are very useful they become our favourites, we praise them too much because they deliver. If we are not alive to such insensitive behavior we may end up over promoting them. But this will breed resentment all around. This is specially the case with some people who work in the staff function like personnel, administration and finance. With very little responsibility in client facing activities where client satisfaction may get measured and significant control they have of day to day conveniences, upward orientation gives them enormous influence with the big bosses. They grow very fast. But this is cancerous growth. If it is not contained, it can spell doom for their organization in the long run. Unfortunately such behavior will have very negative impact on the bosses

I have met a few such people in my long career. One used to be an HR executive. She made sure that she implemented her boss’s wishes ruthlessly. She gave regular feedback to her boss on what is happening around. But she was an absolute failure as far as her role as an HR executive. Her colleagues could not stand her and her subordinates hated her. But she was the gunslinger for her bosses and hence their darling.

The worst is when they reach very senior position. That often becomes the beginning of the end for the organization they head. If they have risen up primarily by pleasing their bosses, they will have difficulty in making the team/ organization to deliver. But by then many of the good people would have left. With what is left, it could be practically difficult to deliver. That is why when we evaluate and reward performance of people it has to be against the total organizational cost (not the cost of salary and perks alone ) and not just on what they may deliver. Bull dogs can be good in hunting trips, but they can not be the one running the farm.

In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.  Ken Blanchard

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Flight to Freedom (Leisure)

I was always a water person. As a child, I enjoyed swimming. I moved on to rowing and then I learnt the joy of windsailing in Jakarta. Then I experimented with to scuba diving. When I moved to Mumbai my passion for the sea still persisted and Colaba sailing club enabled me to pursue this. An early morning sail out into the deep blue sea, (I can’t vouch for the blueness of Mumbai sea!) with the sea princess caressing every inch of my body with her wet and salty embrace, still fills me with an exhilaration that is difficult to express in words.


After that I shifted to Delhi; a city far far away from the sea. I could no longer manage my morning sail out into the sea before getting busy with the daily grind.

I met Rahul who became a good friend within a very short time. May be some connection from our previous incarnation: - ). I shared with him my frustration of not being able to indulge in something that connected me wuth the nature and tickled my adrenal glands.

He offered to find me a solution. He asked me to join him on a Saturday early morrning. Both of us got into my car. Rahul took the driver’s seat. I was all excited and my heart was filled with anticipation. I was looking forward to any surprise. From the highway we turned into a side lane. The road was narrow and deserted. It was luscious green all around. We reached the destination in few minutes.

What a sight. All those beauties standing out in the field, enjoying the early rays of sun. I could not take my eyes off them. Rahul asked me to choose one and mount her.

“Don’t worry. I have selected a gentle one for you. She will be nice to you. Once you mount her and she is on the go, you should start your up-and-down motion with her rhythm” He explained to me the basics of dealing with them.

Before this, I had sat on a horse only at those touristy places where the groom held the reins and the horse walked along placidly. In the club the groom helped me to mount the horse and then handed me the reins and a whip. I was filled with trepidation. Rahul rode up to me.

“Koshy start trotting” He suggested.

“How?”

“Rub your heels against the girth of the horse” He explained.

I did what he asked me to and the horse (her name was jungle baby) started trotting.

Oh My god, I was bouncing up and down and my back hurt.

“Koshy you have to move up and down, kind of like sit ups, along with the rhythm of the trot” Rahul started his lesson.

As I proceeded with my riding for couple of days I realized that it was not going to be easy to be a good rider. A lot to learn! The moment a person mounts, the horse realizes how good a rider he is. When it realizes that you are a novice, it decides what to do. Each horse has his /her own personality. Some are gentle and well behaved. Some are lazy and just won’t move, while others are rascals and will try to throw you off.

A few days into my riding, one morning as I was mounting a horse some fellow riders invited me to join them for a hack in the forest behind the club. I decided it was worth a try. As we trotted into the wild, the horse picked up speed and I was both scared and ecstatic. Rahul was behind me. Suddenly the rider in front shifted to a canter. Meenakshi, my horse followed suit. I did not know that when a horse started cantering I had to stop sit-ups and just sit. So I continued to do sit-ups and I was getting thrown up and down. I thought that I was going to fall off.

“Koshy stop the up-down motions and sit steady” Rahul yelled.

I pulled at the reins and Meenakhi slowed down.

I was hooked. But I had to pay the price to get some level of mastery on these animals. Only then could I take him where I wanted and not the other way! For the first few days my back and hip joints hurt, and I could not walk normally. May be it raised a few eyebrows and some of my friends asked me to my face what my latest pastime was. I experienced what we mean by "a pain in the butt"  However all these are nothing but minor irritants in comparison to the feeling of exhilaration I had when a horse zipped along the tracks.

I knew that horse riding could be a good exercise for the horse; but I never knew that it could be an exercise for the rider too. That is because I had only sat on a horse that walked slowly. But as I graduated to a trot, a canter and a gallop and when I learned to balance on my toes in the stirrup and do continuous sit ups I realized that the rider does get some exercise too.

Whenever I am in Delhi I try not to miss my early morning rides. Some days I stay back in the arena, some days I go for hack rides in the forest behind the club and on some days I practice my jumps over the hurdles. Now I know what Shakespeare meant when he worte  “When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”

Tail Piece: When I moved over to Delhi from Mumbai, there was no more sailing. When I moved over to consulting from industry it was like a metamorphosis from being mother to a nanny or from a builder to an architect; life had changed 180 degree .I was out of my comfort zone. I had two options; either to look behind with fondness and regret or to look ahead for new adventures. I chose the latter and I am having fun!

“I hate the word success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s goal in life. It is like the male spider that gets eaten up when it succeeds in its courtship. I like the stage of continuous becoming, with a goal in front and not behind” Bernard Shaw.

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