Educational Reforms

1. Universities should form a collaboration with or complete take over by industries. There can be two types of Education centres. Research centres and Industry run universities. Research centres will give diploma and employ the students, by paying them salaries. Industry run universities may charge fees from students.

2. Big organisations like NASA can start a NASA lab and nurture school students and find their talents, which is the best way of evaluation. NASA should start a university, typically catering to the areas of their interest. Evaluated students from NASA lab will be given admission to these universities.

3. Universities can encourage entrepreneurship by having Venture Capitalists meet and getting 5% stake in the start-ups without investing. Research centres will not have this kind of meets.

4. Industry run universities should encourage full - scholarships for students, based on their talents, which will be profitable to these industries, no matter they start a new venture or not.

Steps to decrease income inequality

US government can make mandatory for large corporations beyond certain value to distribute a certain part of its shares to general public through equity or mutual funds (dedicated only to these large corporations, taking mutual funds route is highly recommended), restricting the sale to middle class and low economic class in equity or mutual funds. Companies, when reach the designated threshold should redistribute their shares to general public, may even give a preference to low income households, among those who apply for their shares initially and thereafter restrict sales to middle and low economic class. This will distribute wealth to the middle class and to a certain amount to low income households. The institutional investors can invest in startups and SMEs till it reaches the threshold and sell their shares thereafter. These investors will now invest in new ventures and companies which need investment, inturn rekindling economic activity, further generating growth in the US economy. Share prices may increase less to some extent, compared to earlier model, since we are restricting the sale of shares to people of middle and low income class, but organic growth will not be affected, which will bring profits to the middle class and the poor. All tricks like tax evading, showing losses like amazon does, anything big companies fathom does, will not affect the middle and poor class. It can only increase their wealth. This policy inturn will help solve the huge salary inequalities between top paid workers like CEOs to down the ladder workers. From the 1% to the 99%, without affecting the economy and the core principles of capitalism.

Education Reforms for grade 8 to 12 students

1. Students to study that or those subject(s) they love to read. Within each subject, the topics they study is also by choice and evaluated by same online teaching softwares. They can even goto advanced topics taught in colleges, based on their capabilities and interests. All students need to do is pass minimum number of topics, overall in all subjects, not in each subject, as per their choice.

2. Obviously Technology will replace teachers and teachers will be mere guides and mentors.

3. Practical labs will be setup in each district headquarters, where students will pursue basic practicals at will guided by professionals. These labs will be privatised, means government will pay money to private companies, to run these labs on a contract basis, with more money based on feedback from students. Students who need knowledge on certain exclusive high tech industry, Online Video Chat will be enabled with Industry. This will reduce the cost of running practical labs for every field, substantially. Students will be given free student pass on public transports, authorised by school staffs, for every visit.

4. Common Entrance Tests will be conducted post higher secondary only on subjects students wish to pursue in college. Like if u want to study physics or mechanical engineering, you need to write CETs only on physics and topics relevant to mechanical engineering. Even those topics is as per your choice in a variety of topics, in that stream. With certain minimum number of topics of ur choice as compulsory. All government colleges will need CET.

5. Patents of new inventions and ideas will be considered as booster of CET scores and will be given as much importance as CET scores. Colleges will reserve certain amount of seats for patents alone and patents will be evaluated by industry and college professors. This point will have further discussions.

6. Universities wholly run by Industries will have a free hand selecting their students, even purely based on interviews. Government run colleges will have CETs and will collaborate with industry. CET will be a separate international governing body, like GMAT or GRE and only government run colleges are bound by its results. Industry run colleges can consider, partly consider or not consider the CET score.

7. History will be compulsory for each grade, with few basic topics. History will be included in the course material, with each country having it's own material.

8. The advantage of this system is students can pursue degree on the subject they love, and nobody can force them to study anything other than their interests. When you study what you love, there will be a huge increase in the number of inventions and the whole education system will go to next level of advancement.

9. Private companies running the labs can negotiate with the student inventors to share their inventions and patents with them for a fee, which is acceptable to the students. These inventions will put students under the industry and the world's radar and give them very good exposure to the outside world, which the companies must do. This will earn money for students, while studying itself and encourage private companies to setup labs at probably less fee from the government.

10. All class 5 to 9 ( optionally 10 ) students of government schools which has language other than English, as a medium of instruction, will go through a bridge course for a year, where they will be taught terms of English in mathematics to science, along with English speaking skills. For all those patrons of native language, you can always study till class 7 in ur mother tongue and take a bridge course for a year, which is a stupid idea. Because there is no college degree in STEM course which has language other than English as a medium of instruction. You may say that Germans study in German, French people in french. One thing you should remember is there is only french in France, German in Germany. But in India, there are hundreds of languages. We recommend students to study in English, because in universities, you will struggle. But, government will provide courses in major regional languages, with scientific and other important terms only in English.

11. Online education syllabus through tablets will need a huge participation by professors, online teaching companies and the industry. Every topic should go deep, very very deep. Like if i start studying solar power technology, the students should reach the summit where they should know how solar panel generates power,the areas it can be applied, what are the cost effective ways and new techniques in that field, also practically he must be able to create one from basic tools. Stage by stage the progress should go without too much of jargons. Finish the topic you have chosen, which is what i call immersive learning. Syllabus should start with certain number of topics in each subject and should keep on increasing every year with more topics and updating the old ones. It should be a continuous process.

12. The strength of this method lies in the  education software. Even complex topics should be explained easily step by  step. Normally 80% of each topic will be easy to understand. Remaining 20% will summarize the topic. U will have simple questionnaire at the end of each of the chapter. U should clear it to go to next chapter. You just have to clear the minimum number of topics, per grade.

13. The government can bring in an international organisation to bring in best minds in the world, to contribute to developing the course material, with basic principle of easy step by step approach. This will reduce the cost of the course material, bringing in high standards, which is also mutually beneficial to all the co-operating countries.

14. CET will be an international governing body, which will not only conduct tests but update and add topics the course material. CET will give text course material. Government colleges will need CET for admission and all government engineering colleges will be converted to purely academic purpose, producing professors holding phd. Admission to those colleges, means u r admitted to do masters and doctorates as well. Medical colleges will need CET.

15. Online libraries, with each topic, containing 3 - 5 books recommended for them should be available on the App. Government can negotiate with the publishers to give Rs. 10 for lending each book for 3 month period. Government paying the whole set of books will result in unnecessary ad-hoc lending of books, resulting in wastage of funds. This CET App can be downloaded on any tablet, with authentication allotted for each student. Those who can't afford tablets , should be provided tablets with subsidy, allowing only the prescribed library books.

Service Tax

Service tax in a line. Each and every service providers should have a Merchant Bank Account. Customers as usual will get 8% cashback and accrual of points. More the points, more the chance of getting lucky lot price from the government. So, customers would like to get more points. But Merchants can't bloat bills, because more bills, more service tax. Let's put service tax at 15% or 20%. Merchants can't increase the price, because there is an open competition from other Merchants.

Suppose the government charges 20% service tax, 5% may be reserved for lucky draw. This is for small customers, but beyond certain lakhs or crores, 5% reduction of service tax can be given, for like big software companies and they should transfer this benefit to high value customers.

Sales Tax and Cashbacks

I suggest a simple method of making every sales being taxed. First, Government of India should give a cashback of 8% on all sales of goods and services, below 10,000 rupees. All cashbacks are eligible only with online bills, which will be simplified by just scanning the merchant's QR code. Every Merchant will be obviously required to move on to using UPI and cashless retail, otherwise you will lose customers to shops using UPI money transfer, who gives 8% cashbacks. Ofcourse, MRP can't be raised and for other goods, competition will crack the price hikes, if merchants try. This in turn will make every retailer to show their full sales report, recorded by their UPI and online bills. The sales tax will be 15% on the MRP of the product, apart from the 8% cashback all retailers and online markets should pay. It is compulsory for all packaged products to print an MRP. Also, above 10,000 purchases will have online bills, without which there will be no guarantee/warranty.

Example with 10% sales tax and 8% cashback for illustrative purpose. So, let's consider this scenario. Suppose, a customer wants to buy an electronic goods or toy or groceries worth 5000. Remember agricultural products are not taxed. So, the merchant says, if you buy with the bill, you will get a cashback of 8%. If you buy without bill, i will give you 10% reduction. 2% is your profit. Profit for merchant is 8% black money. What the government should do is retrieve 10% sales tax at the source. That is when a merchant buys from a dealer, he has to pay a sales tax of 10% to the dealer, beforehand. So, eventually, when he sells the product to the customer, two things he can do. Either sell the product with bill and pay the remaing 8% sales tax to the government. Or sell it in the black market with no bill, eventually getting the same 8% profit. What if he couldn't sell the product. Just return the product to the dealer and retrieve back the sales tax and the cost of the product, which only happens, when you are closing the shop. There's lot of advantage in selling with bill, because you can always get a loan from the bank, if you show healthy money transactions. And you can be a good and honest citizen of the country, which is actually Profitable.

Merchants need not bother about the details of every bill. It is enough, as far as government tax is concerned, to give the bill amount in total. Giving detail bill is only for customers and Merchants own purposes. If customers purchase products and avail cashbacks, these cashbacks will be recorded in Merchant App, linked with the Merchant Bank Account and those cashbacks has to be returned to the government as part of the remaining Sales Tax. Non-packaged Agricultural goods are not taxed, but those selling these products as part of their business or solely selling these products should nevertheless maintain a Merchant Bank Account. For Non - packaged agricultural goods, merchants have to increase the price of the products to 8% and then record their transactions in Merchant App, before collecting the price through UPI. They have to return this 8% as sales tax to the government.

Government can't make cashless compulsory for now. Because, and some may be in unavoidable circumstance like some emergencies, with only cash at that time. If someone buys with cash, Merchants can sell and should sell the product at 8% premium not below that. Even Agro-products sellers, when receiving cash should increase the price of their products to 8%. This cash should be deposited at the Merchant Bank Account once in a month and the extra 8% will not be taxed. Only if customers go cashless, they can avail cashback. Each retailer can sell at any price below MRP for cashless transactions. You just have to return the 8% cashback. There is no necessary to change any existing billing softwares. Just bill amount for cash transactions.

We are neither increasing nor decreasing the price of any goods or service. It will always be determined by the market force. What we intend to do is bring every Merchant under tax net, which will be very good for the economic development of the country and making the economy cashless.

There is no income tax for retailers selling products selling below Rs. 10,000, Only for those specific products. Individual products which costs above 10,000, will be billed and should pay income tax on the profits earned and those products will have a different Sales Tax. Online markets will have same tax as brick and mortar stores. Cashbacks will also be there for Online markets. In case, the tax earned by the government reduces, we will simply increase the sales tax, at source to a few percentage. Income tax is approximately just 15-20% compared to sales tax.

How to avoid bloating of Merchant Accounts through maintaining Dealers inventory

As usual, i have a simple idea to do this. Manufacturers will obviously declare their inventory, to pay sales and income tax. Messing with that will put them behind the bars, with their reputation and company going bust. Dealing with them is easy. Now, we will step in to dealers and sub dealers. Manufacturers when declaring their tax, should also declare the total inventory price, they sell it to dealers, to as many as they wish. These dealers should declare the total inventory price they sell it to sub dealers and then to retailers. When the inventory reaches every stage, we keep the MRP as well, which is easy. And on reaching the retailer. He can't sell above the total inventory MRP. That will check their rule of law of selling not more than MRP. 

Let's take two possible scenarios. Dealers clandestinely procure the inventory from some source, very unlikely. The problem with this is, retailers will not be benefitted from this sale. Because, retailers have to declare their inventory to the government. And that only brings them advantages of bank loans, easy processing of money. The profits margin has nothing to do with clandestine or non- clandestine products. In this scenario, retailers cannot bloat their bank account details, because clandestine products can't be sold through Merchant Bank Accounts, Government has their inventory total. No detail of inventory products is necessary. Just the total amount from each dealer. The government has to provide a separate tax app to keep track of these details.

Let's consider this scenario of retailers bloating the bank accounts themselves by selling their products to bogus customers and buying them back. How will they? We have their inventory total. And if they route through manufacturers, they have to pay income tax as well as sales tax, everytime they re-route it. Dealers can't bring any products into their kitty, without a manufacturer declaring so. Also, banks when considering loans based on Merchant Accounts should consider the number of customers, median of sale, among others, while giving loans.

Only products which have MRP is going to get tax for the government. Remaining products will be of no use for tax. So, we can probably put two separate bills. And wait till Technology penetrates Agricultural products as well. Mostly those who sell non-packaged agro products will not need much money as their investment. Banks need not consider loans based on non packaged Agro-products, as of now. So, for now we will separate the two. But all merchants should digitise using bank accounts.

For two bills, we don't need necessarily two times scan. One scan will give two account details and we can put two separate amounts and authenticate both at once. Only for Merchant Accounts, who declare themselves of selling both products. If it is absolutely necessary, in case there isa huge amount of both transactions happening at once. Also, any bank, UPI or credit/debit card can be used to get government cashbacks and avail its schemes.

Technocracy

I will propose a plan which i will call Technocracy. It is better than democracy or dictatorship or communism or whatever. Technocracy comprises of three things.

Democratic values + Talent + Technology.

I explain this based on Indian Government. Since, that's what i know for now. How we can elect the prime minister, we will come later. But for now, there is a prime minister. He chooses the Union Ministers and Chief Ministers. Chief Minister will choose the State Government Ministers. And those ministers will choose MLAs and allot constituencies for them. These MLAs will choose and allot constituencies for Councellors. There will be no MPs, No Rajya sabha or Lok sabha. Parliament will be conducted department-wise. During budget, Finance Minister will call all CMs and state FMs, along with state and centre beaurocrats to discuss union Government budget. So forth for all ministries. 

Democratic values

So, first democratic values. Every 6 months, there will be election. 6 months for all ranks of state ministers, MLAs and below. 2 years central ministers, CMs and PMs. Not to choose any politician, but to assess his performance.To decide whether he can continue or not. If people choose that he is not performing, he will be fired. This will overcome the main problem in democracy. People don't have knowledge, whom to elect and their inability to oust him for another 5 years. All politicians will undergo this process. Voting will not be ballot. Online voting. Every citizen should register for voting through their Aadhar Card. MLAs and Councellors will be voted by their constituency members. Others can be voted by anyone. If a citizen doesn't have knowledge about any politician, don't vote either for or against him. We recommend only informed voters to participate. To survive, politicians should get more than 50% of votes casted for him. If a politician fails, he will be replaced by another politician by method already told.

Talent

Next, Talent. If a person wants to take part in government, he should have done atleast bachelor's degree in the field, he is applying for. Phd is most welcome. Like Finance Minister should have done MBA in finance, or commerce. Even Railway minister should have done degree in Railways. If there is no specialization available right now for any field, Government itself will start allowing universities to start such degree programs. High scores and leadership qualities should be considered by the respective Politicians, while choosing ministers and other members. And the politicians should give a clear reason, why they chose such a person.

Technology

Next, the most important game changing part. Technology. I will recommend this be given to Microsoft. I will call this Microsoft Administration Application. So, this will bring the whole administration of a country, under one roof. Revenue to Microsoft will come through Advertisements, which can be accurately targeted. There are few things, which should be avoided here, which may compromise India's security like Armed Forces and to some extent police force as well. Each ministry will have a different part in the Administration App. Each basically will do these things.

1. Propoganda

2. Complaints and Rectification

3. Problems, Solutions and Ideas

4. Budget

5. Rank a politician

6. Governance College

7. Policy discussion forum

Propoganda

This is a way by which government reaches to each and every state, constituency, town and village. If government decides to introduce a welfare scheme, it will reach every citizen, what government is offering them. Like, government wants to open a university in their town, wants to bring awareness regarding a scheme like suganya samridhi scheme. Each and every program designed by government, will accurately calculate, who is eligible, who should be informed, about the scheme.

Complaints and Rectification

This will be a part, everyone will love. Suppose a citizen finds that there is no proper sanitation in his area or a school in his area is not functioning properly or there is any proof of corruption, He can simply take a video of it, locate using map, if necessary, and upload it in the App. Every complaint should have at least five persons endorsing it, with each of them having a different address as per Aadhar ID. It is not true that there is only one vote per house. It is one vote per house per issue. Some house may have elders. They will vote for their issues. Some will have youngsters ( above age 18 ), they will have their own issues. This will tell accurately from anywhere, what is happening even in a small town or village. If a politician receives a complaint in his area, he has to rectify it, or give a proper reason for not rectifying, like unavailability of funds. These complaints will be give raise to points. Red points for Complaints, Green points for Rectification, Blue points for Reason without rectification, Yellow points for dispute, Black for inaction. R= G+B+Y+Bl. More Green points or less Red points means a good politician. Green points divided by Red points will be a good measure of that politician's performance, based on quantity. Quality of a Politician's performance can be calculated by taking into account the number of endorsements each complaint has received, then calculating Green / Red. Calculations will be done by Microsoft software. Weight for every complaint = Number of complaints / Number of individual houses in that Constituency. This number of houses in that Constituency increases as per the position of the politician holds. Councillor will have less households compared to MLA. Weightage is anyway going to be very less for complaints made for fun and police may take disciplinary action against them. MLA responsible for all his councillors performance. His score is aggregate score of his councillors + any common additional issues he has solved in his constituency. We can add a layer between councillor and MLA if necessary. Ministers are not responsible for any councillor or MLA. His score is purely based on his performance in his ministry. Every complaint should mention, whether it is Councillor's issue, MLA's issue, Minister's issue or any combination of them. If you have any doubt, whose problem it is, you can contact Councillors and ask them or maybe a  toll free helpline, if possible. Colorts will be decided by the 5 or more persons who lodged the complaint. Majority points will decide the color. Like  if 5 persons complained and 3 vote as green, it is green. But if there is no majority like 2 votes for green, 2 votes for red and 1 vote for blue. It will goto dispute Yellow points. Also, if a politician says, he has cleared the problem, but those who made the  complaint, gave red points, it will goto dispute Yellow points. Yellow points is of no use to the politician. If those who made complaint, do it again and again on a politician, because of personal vengeance, more dispute Yellow points will come and those who made complaint will not be allowed to complaint again. We can fix that to 10 Yellow points per Aadhar ID, more than that will be barred to complaint for 6 months. 

For making a complaint you don't need a Smartphone. After making a complaint in  someone's Smartphone, others can endorse through OTP received on feature phones. Only that, that phone number should match their Aadhar ID's Phone number. More the number of endorsements, more is of importance to the politician. Unavailability of funds is no excuse. If there is a sanitation problem, Canvas volunteers and NGOs to come and clean it. If a school doesn't have enough resources, find a corporate to sponsor for the school and upgrade it's classroom and infrastructure. Innovation, problem solving is not just for software developers. It applies to everyone who wants to serve as politicians. Then only you will get good color points and performance rank. Crime complaints can't be lodged like murder, rape or kidnapping. These cases are sensitive and should be handled only by police. But corruption even by police can be recorded and uploaded. Complaints section can do anonymous posting, no other field will allow anonymous posting. Normally, Rectification color points will be given by the persons who posted the complaint. Anonymous complaints will most probably some kind of high profile corruption. Rectification color points for anonymous complaints will be given by police department. Even if it's about police, it will go to higher authority. Police will track anonymous complaint, before allowing  it on Administration App. Nobody goes anonymous to complain about sanitation. Sometimes it is safe to go non anonymous for political complaints, because after i declare that i made that complaint and anything happens to me, who is responsible?. 

Problems, Solutions and Ideas

For people who are smart, and want to contribute to the society, but couldn't do so earlier. This is for you. Government will post problems they are facing and ask for solutions from talented people in the society. This will not be like a Social media post, where no one cares about comments. There will be interaction with people giving solutions. Best solutions will be given awards by PMs and CMs and recognised in the Administration App. As already mentioned, no anonymous posts will be allowed to avoid junk.

Budget

This is a game changer, to stop corruption and misuse of government money. Budget allocated for every department and every single project will be clearly posted for public to know. Also, who got Government Contracts for what amount their project got approved, will also be out to public. So, if Government allocates 2 lakhs for a park near you and there is no park, everyone can easily know, who swallowed it. It will also clearly tell you what amount is allocated to different departments, in turn telling you government priorities, Government's income and their tax allotment.

Rank a politician

Based on the performance and points they scored, the progress they showed in their constituencies and departments, citizens can rank a politician from 1 to 10, so that he knows how he performed, why certain area people has given him low marks, where to improve, where his strengths are and so on. Citizen should rank only ministers, whose work they know. Like health workers, Medical students, people who goto government hospitals and those who are benefitted by government health insurances or have a good knowledge about it should vote for a health minister. If you know nothing about health minister's policies, don't vote for or against him. There will also be factors like whether a minister got approval from public on a certain policy. How many welfare schemes, he has introduced and how many were successful, which will be calculated by Microsoft formulas, and will add to their scores, along with people's score. Every 5 years, low ranked politicians will be removed and high ranked politicians will be promoted to higher positions and new politicians recruited, as per the recommendations of Chief Minister. It will be done every 5 years because those low ranked politicians did pass people's mandate, every 6 months. Just that they are not talented enough to beat others. As years pass, naturally highly capable politicians will come up and they will select such highly capable politicians.

Governance College

Every state need to have its governance college, which will give Master's Degree, on all ministries, each course will have 2 or 3 years time duration. Participants should have already done atleast a bachelor's degree in their respective fields, in any university. Entrance test will shortlist the candidates, after which they will be interviewed. Voluntary social work done, making any remarkable achievement,  giving new ideas regarding governance should be considered in interviews. This college will help political leaders to interview and select their ministers and all other politicians.

Policy discussion forum

Every new policy after conceived and finalised by politicians and beaurocrats will go to public policy discussion forum, where citizens of the country, from experts to ordinary knowledgable citizens enter a healthy discussion. It is important for politicians and beaurocrats to wade off popular sentiments if any, by explaining clearly the merits of a policy. Participants may find holes in the policy, which will help government to rectify it, before applying it.

No matter what, a Prime Minister can't stay in power for more than 10 years. If he reaches the last 6 months, he has to choose a few possible future PMs and train them, evaluate them and then announce him as next PM. That PM should get approval from majority of CMs. No personal favours allowed.

Soft exit from COVID - 19

India may have some resources to put up the lockdown for 6 months, hoping that vaccines will come by that time. But, what will happen to other countries like Africa, which doesn't have such resources. The best possible way is to do a soft exit. Protect the most vulnerable. Elders and children. For children, this academic year only study from home. India can extend even 6 months lock down. The maximum lock down India can do. After that open sector by sector. Africa can't afford even that. There is lot of lower class people who depend on Construction industry. Hunger will kill them, even if corona doesn't. At the same time, open the sector, which gives maximum revenue to government, IT and ITES. There will be virus infection. Death rate will be lower than even 5%, because we are first releasing young people. I guess at least half of them will get mild infection and will recover from it. Also, Corona infection will be spread across states. Not putting heavy pressure on the health infrastructure and health workers, in one particular state. One by one we can release sector by sector. Meanwhile we hope our best that vaccine comes soon. That's the only remedy to completely stop this Virus. People say there is a curve which goes up and comes down, without vaccines, which i completely don't understand, how that happens.

These poor migrant workers need not necessarily go back to cities and probably be medium of transfer. They can be taught to produce what are necessarily needed in this moment. Masks, PPEs, and medical equipments. All the products that is needed in  this hour, not just medical equipments. Find what is important now. And also even if construction work can't be started. Build highways outside the city. Build bridges. Not only migrant workers, whoever are poor, but healthy and young, who will overcome this Covid infection, can be employed in infrastructure projects.