RIYADH, 2 March 2006 — India’s budget for 2006-07 presented to Indian Parliament by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday has good news for millions of expatriate Indians. The very fact that the finance minister has left income tax rates untouched and did not think of including overseas Indians to mobilize additional tax revenues means expatriate Indians could remit their money to India with total confidence.
The issue of taxing the overseas earnings deposited in Indian banks often gets raised at the time of budget. But this time by not even referring to it, the finance minister seems to have set all speculation to the rest. “This is strong signal and the expatriate Indians now hope that matter remains buried forever”, says a Riyadh-based Indian employee.
The move should cheer large numbers of Gulf Indians in particular who contribute up to 75 percent out of the total money remitted to India by the overseas Indians every year. Overseas Indians have two major accounts with Indian banks - Non-Resident External Rupee Account (NRE) and Foreign Currency Non-Resident Account (FCNR).
In another significant step, Chidambaram last year had made efforts to revive the Urdu language, mostly the mother tongue of Muslims in northern India and in southern cities such as Hyderabad.
Keeping his words, and as a step forward, this year the minister has increased the government contribution from 100 million to 130 million rupees to the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language. The government acknowledges that there is little provision for teaching Urdu in places where Urdu is spoken.
It has come forward to provide central assistance for recruitment and posting of Urdu language teachers in primary and upper-primary schools that serve a population of which at least one fourth belongs to Urdu language group.