Feeling the heat over the Opposition’s campaign on the growing incidents of atrocities against Dalits, particularly in Gujarat, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP’s lead speaker Vinay Sahasrabuddhe in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday cited the Centre’s two initiatives: ‘StartUp India’ that provides tax benefits to startups and ‘StandUp India’ that is focused on providing credit to Dalit entrepreneurs.
Ironically, the official figures show that of a total of 728 applications received under Startup India till Monday, the government has recommended only one for tax benefits. The record for StandUp India is slightly better. Of the total Rs 1360.11 crore disbursed in loans till July 15, Rs 179.15 crore, or 13.17 per cent were given to Scheduled Castes (Dalits). The rest went to women and Scheduled Tribes, the other target beneficiary groups.
“The government is committed to social justice and social equality… these are not issues of politics… the way of ensuring justice is to go beyond welfarism the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi has initiated StartUp India, StandUp India and promoted Dalit entrepreneurship…Mr. Modi is trying to translate the message of Ambedkar into reality,” said Mr. Sahasrabuddhe, the lead speaker of the BJP on the short duration discu ssion over the latest instances of Dalit atrocities.
The official figures government tabled in Parliament earlier this week show that the Startup India portal received a total of 728 applications till Monday (the notification defining startups was published on Feb. 17, 2016).
Of these, it categorised 180 applicants as startups (whose applications were found to be complete), but found that only 16 applicants had been incorporated after April 1, 2016, the cut off date stipulated in the Finance Act 2016 for consideration for tax benefits.
The Finance Act provided income tax exemption for 3 years in a block of 5 years for the startups (Companies and LLPs) incorporated between April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2019 and certified as eligible by the Inter-Ministerial Board. In its meeting held on June 28, 2016, the Board recommended the tax benefits for just one of the three applications put up to it for consideration.
Innovation eco-system
The flagship initiative, announced by Prime Minister Modi in his Independence Day speech last year, intends to build an eco-system for nurturing innovation and startups in the country for generating employment opportunities. Mr. Modi formally launched it on January 16, 2016, unveiling its action plan. Since then, the toll-free line the Centre set up to disseminate information on the scheme has handled 200 queries per day.
The StandUp India scheme, launched on April 5, 2016 by Mr. Modi, aims to facilitate bank loans of Rs.10 lakh-Rs.1 crore to at least one Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one woman beneficiary per bank branch for setting up a greenfield enterprise in trading, services or manufacturing sector.
