SHUBHAM BASU

(Gurgaon is claimed to be the millennium city in India. In ten years time it shall turn into a city of mighty skyscrapers, in twenty years there shall be films being shot around every corner)

Gurgaon goes online, or atleast partially…Signing up for service tax is now easy, just fill up the online form ST-1 at www.aces.gov.in, take the print to the excise office (see map, red dot) with the supporting documents mentioned and submit it to the officers. You should find a gentleman, Suderlal, who seems to be one of the bosses around and very well mannered. The primary gentleman responsible for requests in the realm of professional training and coaching is Mr. Sandeep, extremely meek. I felt really surprised to find him there. Like any usual Government office, this one is stacked with files and thick iron sheet almirahs (Godrej kinds). A couple of tables are equipped with desktops with ‘lcd’. There is a specific gentleman who is always busy entering data into the computer from the forms submitted. It’s only been around ten days that the system is live and I have been amongst the first ones to avail the facility. Amongst the good crowd you always however find a few who stand out, both ways, and so did we. One gentleman, Mr. Chauhan, spat fire, might have been angry for some reason, he didn’t like me standing behind him talking to another gentleman. Later we came to know that is a Superintendant. Surprised!!!

The Government has definitely empowered the citizen to a certain extent, making the process easier. Now you don’t need to pay your CA the extra bucks for Service Tax registration, and more important that the money is the fact that you can do it yourself, atleast it cuts things down to your personal choice. In the end I am very impressed with the progress. There Mr. Manmohan Singh is sitting next to Obama at G8 and here Gurgaon is busy empowering her citizen.

There is another change, instead of humans, now computers generate Service Tax codes. The new codes have <PAN>SD<terminal digits> instead of ‘ST’, so don’t be surprised when you get the documents in your hand. And incase you have opted for email delivery, they will be right on your desktop within a week. If they don’t, the provisional code issued is your new Service Tax number. This is such a positive force.

 I agree that there is a lot to be done when it comes to roads, but look at the way infrastructure is growing in town. It might be angering factions and the lobby that talks about poor drainage and parking, but then again, what’s the best we can do? Our strengths are cell phones and internet, lets make the best of it. Good job Govt. of India/Haryana, I hope we can pay all our Govt. dues online pretty soon. And please work a little more on all fronts…and if you need help, the citizens are around. Why don’t you ask for our help, we will help make Gurgaon better. For all the Government officials who haven’t heard of the richest village in the world, ‘Huaxi’, a village in China. We can also create an example if we can involve all our citizens. If you need ideas, we are here. If you need execution, we are here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.