JEST GST - 456

OCTOBER 14, 2026

If Gill Were the CEC...

By Vijay Kumar

FOR this week, Jest GST takes a deliberate detour from the murky labyrinth of circulars and notifications to visit the summit of ideas: the TIOL Congress 2026.

Disclaimer: The following account should not be mistaken for an official record of the TIOL Congress 2026. It is merely an informal chronicle as viewed through the imperfect, occasionally distracted, and frequently irreverent lens of Jest GST. Readers seeking a faithful transcript may consult the official proceedings; for the rest of us, the story begins below.

In the National Capital, political weather changes without warning-and when it does, the streets pay the price.

As we prepared for the opening session of the TIOL Congress at Delhi's Shangri-La Hotel around 10 am on October 6, history paid an unannounced visit. Smartphone screens lit up with news that opposition parties had captured the Capital's central arteries, noisily demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

When political cadres hit Delhi roads, vehicular motion becomes a distant memory. Central Delhi froze into a sea of idling engines and police barricades. Gyanesh Kumar had no intention of resigning, but our convention was under administrative siege. In Lutyens' Delhi, transit time is strictly theoretical.

One Chief Guest reached within waving distance of the portico but couldn't breach the cordons. Yet, displaying stubborn grit, our speakers refused to yield. Several abandoned their chauffeur-driven cars, hitched their trousers, and marched through the police lines on foot in full glory.

Watching our venerable guests march past the barricades, one of the speakers quipped: "Maybe the gates would not have been closed had MS Gill been the Chief Election Commissioner now."

Once the hall settled, the street blockade was forgotten, and natural intelligence flowed uninterrupted from the dais to the floor.

Welcome Address, Side Effects Nil

I opened proceedings with a customary salute to taxpayers, policymakers, and those heroic souls still waiting, after nine long years, for GST to become "simple".

Modesty forbids me from recounting my own address, save for directing curious readers to the excerpts online where clapping was officially certified as the only exercise immune to scrutiny notices and reverse charge.

https://youtu.be/fHEH3zfH_BY?si=dewfTEznHlM8U_bd

Feathers, Faith, and the Temple Economy

We began on an unexpectedly romantic, non-fiscal note with Mr. Vinod Goyal, a retired IRS officer who now shoots only with a camera, presenting breathtaking wildlife photography including rare visuals of peacocks mating.

The presentation briefly achieved something no taxation conference has managed in living memory: complete audience attention.

Before anyone could frame a show-cause notice, we pivoted from wildlife to holy temples.

Chief Guest Dr. Sudhanshu Trivedi, Hon'ble MP, delivered a riveting address on the Temple Economy and India's Development Model. History usually associates temples with economics only in tragedy-invasions, loot, and plunder. Rarely are they recognized as formidable economic engines.

Consider Ayodhya. Prior to 2014, it drew barely 1.7 lakh annual visitors; today footfalls have exploded, generating thousands of crores in local hospitality, aviation, and trade.

The same revival transformed Varanasi and the Kumbh Mela, where millions assemble voluntarily without celebrity brand ambassadors.

Corporate India talks about CSR as if it had been invented in a business school. Yet Indian temples have run bhandaras and gurudwaras have served langars for centuries. Economists who chant that "there is no such thing as a free lunch" need only visit a langar to be cured of the notion.

Dr. Trivedi then dropped a Silicon Valley revelation: a young, penniless Steve Jobs sustained himself on free meals at an ISKCON temple. Economists may now claim to have evidence that a free temple lunch helped launch a USD 3-trillion tech empire! Jobs later advised Mark Zuckerberg, during an early career crisis, to visit the Neem Karoli Baba ashram to reset his compass.

The startup highway doesn't just run through Stanford; occasionally it meanders through a temple queue. And civilisational progress, Dr. Trivedi reminded us, cannot be measured solely by GDP-especially when nations topping happiness indices also happen to lead the world in antidepressant consumption.

Growth without dharma is merely high-speed accounting.

Trillionaires and the Dawn Hackathon

Moving from temples to trillionaires usually takes several decades of industrial planning; at the TIOL Congress, it didn't even take a coffee break.

Mr. Deepak Bagla, Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission, predicted that while the first trillionaire came from software, the next will emerge from STEPS: Sports, Tourism, Entertainment, and Personal Services/Wellness.

This upends traditional Indian parenting, which historically prescribed only three respectable careers: medicine, engineering, or government service. Somewhere, an anxious mother is already asking: "Beta, are you preparing for IIT, or are you preparing for trillionairehood?"

AI, Chilling Trade-Offs, and the Creative Economy

Dr. Palanivel Thiagarajan (PTR), the former Tamil Nadu Finance and IT Minister, tackled Artificial Intelligence, financial markets, and democracy.

I never feared AI replacing politicians; my genuine dread was what would happen to an AI model attempting to process PTR's intellect-it would suffer immediate system failure!

PTR warned that hyper-realistic synthetic video is destroying democratic common ground. In Tamil Nadu, with near-100% connectivity, fake videos fool the sharpest eyes. He turned his banker's eye on Silicon Valley: an AI firm that lost USD 42 billion last year is eyeing an IPO at a USD 2-trillion valuation. Meanwhile, US Treasuries face 25-year yield highs, adding staggering debt-servicing burdens.

Most chilling was OpenAI chief Sam Altman's remark that "some bad things will happen in the pursuit of many good things." Democracy never authorized a lone corporate CEO to unilaterally gamble with the risks humanity must bear in pursuit of private equity returns.

Mr. Aubrey Aloysius, CEO, Lorraine Music followed with a rallying cry for India's Rs. 2.5-lakh-crore creative economy, unveiling the CREATE compact (Curriculum, Rights, Enterprise, Access, Trade/Tax, Evidence) so Indian youth become global IP creators rather than passive consumers of foreign apps.

The Realistic Tripod of Trade

Mr. Om Prakash Hisaria of Reliance Industries injected a refreshing dose of realism into global trade talk.

Dispelling casual slogans about "China Plus One," he showed that when China's share of US imports fell by 5.7%, Vietnam grabbed 1.9%, while India secured under half a percent. We missed that initial bus.

As India signs FTAs with Europe and the UK, Hisaria drew a vital distinction between legally available and usable market access. Tariffs on manufactured gear are already negligible in the West, so duty cuts alone won't trigger factory shifts. We need regulatory alignment, standards recognition, investment protection, and frictionless customs.

We cannot build a USD 1-trillion export powerhouse on basmati rice and cotton shirts alone. Signing FTAs without fixing domestic regulatory roadblocks, Hisaria quipped, is like buying a smartphone with 50 features and using only three-the other 47 remain expensive, ornamental ballast!

Behavioural Taxation vs. Gen Z Habits

Mr. Pushpinder Puniha, Chairperson of the Consultative Group on Tax Policy at NITI Aayog, advocated for trust-based governance and pre-filled returns. With India processing half the world's real-time digital financial transactions, the Income Tax department is designing pre-filled assessments: the system aggregates your salary, interest, and trades, leaving future returns with just one line: "We calculate your income as Rs. 28,47,213; kindly explain why you disagree." CAs need not panic, however-taxpayers will always need chartered accountants for emotional companionship during scrutiny season!

Mr. Surinder Rajput of Turms Intelligent Apparel illustrated modern consumer behaviour. His firm makes stain-repellent cotton shirts and anti-odour travel socks wearable for seven consecutive days.

India's 37-crore Gen Z youth steer USD 860 billion in spending, completely ignoring the traditional virtue of saving for a housing loan. Instead, they spend on Rs. 25,000 sneakers and quick-commerce impulse buys via UPI. When Turms raised denim prices from Rs. 2,099 to Rs. 3,999, sales shot up 28% because young shoppers chased "premiumization". Managing them is an adventure: make them endure a Bengaluru traffic jam or deny leave when their dog needs vaccination, and they resign on the spot!

Prof. Ashwani Kumar offered a sobering caution: Direct Benefit Transfers now move Rs. 25 lakh crore across 320 schemes, but "platform welfare" risks digital exclusion and credential theft. While platforms suppress visible, retail bribery on the street, centralized forms of systemic data manipulation quietly grow deeper roots.

The Companion Economy

Stepping away from fiscal blueprints, Mr. Tapas Sen, co-founder of Radio Mirchi, explored society's collective villain: Loneliness, driven by fear, anger, and digital isolation.

While Big Tech mines the "Attention Economy" through dopamine loops, tomorrow belongs to the "Companion Economy." In a world of generative bots, radio remains the last human medium. Sen recalled Sachin Tendulkar confessing that he only turns off his radio when in the shower or out batting at the crease-a warm, unobtrusive companion that never judges.

The TIOL Awards: Trichet, Montek, and Mohan

After a day spent debating taxes, technology, trade, temples and trillionaires, it was only fitting that the Congress paused to honour those who had spent decades shaping the economic architecture within which all those debates now occur.

The awardees were welcomed by Dr. Shailendra Kumar, Founder Editor of TIOL and Trustee of TKF, who described the honours as an expression of gratitude to individuals whose contributions had profoundly influenced economic policy and fiscal governance. The awards were presented by Justice A. K. Patnaik and Justice S. K. Singh, former judges of the Supreme Court of India.

Mr. Jean-Claude Trichet, former President of the European Central Bank, reflected on the tightrope that central bankers walk-navigating shocks from wars, green transition capital demands, and massive AI data centres while safeguarding price stability.

Reading the citation for Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, I paid tribute to that iconic silhouette in the blue turban who drafted the 1990 M-Document, dismantled the License Raj, and steered the Planning Commission with seasoned optimism.

Accepting his award, Dr. Ahluwalia noted that while 1991 occurred during a global consensus toward open trade, today's world is defined by unpredictable fragmentation.

Dr. Rakesh Mohan charmed the gathering with trademark wit, observing that while Dr. Ahluwalia and Mr. Trichet operated at policy pinnacles, he worked down in the procedural trenches. Several of his landmark reports-on small-scale industries, petrochemicals, and railways-had vanished down administrative wells! Their disappearance may itself deserve a separate government committee.

Turning serious, he noted that despite decades of 6.5% GDP growth, India's central tax-to-GDP ratio remains stuck at 10%, starving public healthcare and school education of vital resources. With the global economic centre of gravity moving back to Asia, he adapted the famous adage:

"Go East, young man. Go East, young woman. Focus on health, focus on education, and perhaps all of you should start learning Chinese."

By dusk, what began as a traffic-choked morning had woven together peacocks, pilgrimage corridors, trillionaires, AI, customs tripods, and human belonging. Outside, Delhi's political shouting match continued; inside, ideas moved freely.

Until the next Congress, may Delhi traffic and Indian politics work out a peaceful truce. And whenever the bewildering maze of tax jurisprudence threatens your peace of mind, strike your palms together for a hearty clap. It aids circulation, costs nothing, and remains 100% exempt from GST!