They voted their mayor right back in despite a drug conviction earnt while in office -

They voted “their” mayor right back in, despite a drug conviction earnt while in office – and the whites fled some more.The opening of the MCI Center, a 20,000-seater stadium and entertainment centre, is one reason why Washingtonians have started tentatively to hope again. Equally, say many who left for the suburbs out of despair, another mayor, another council might have yanked the city up by its bootstraps.In recent years, the whites blamed the black mayor and his entourage for bad management (and worse). The scale of dereliction in all points east of the centre is such that if it were just another big American city, it would have been given up for lost long ago. It was Bill Clinton’s second foray into the rundown hinterland of the White House in less than a week – the first was to the opening of the gleaming new MCI sports stadium – and the proximity of the two outings, each one a rarity for an incumbent president, was widely remarked upon.Hopes for an upturn in Washington’s fortunes have been raised before, of course, only to be dashed. The last month of the old year was a kaleidoscope of activity for the US capital. Just before Christmas, the city named an aggressive, no-nonsense Texan, Camille Barnett (aka the Dragon Lady), to be chief executive.

Seen as highly competent, highly intelligent, but less than diplomatic, Ms Barnett has ruffled feathers in previous appointments and is deemed quite capable of doing the same again.
Less than two weeks before that announcement, the Metropolitan Baptist Church in north-west Washington had welcomed an unaccustomed speaker to its Sunday morning service: the President of the United States. With the appointment of a new chief executive and evidence of fresh interest from the White House, Washington DC is at a turning point. Mary Dejevsky asks whether this much-maligned city, which combines some of the most elegant town planning in the United States with some of the country’s most hopeless ghettos, could finally change for the better. And then, what happens? You go out tomorrow.”These may be unfamiliar notions to the majority of Indian citizens. But people are finally coming round to the idea that paying tax may be no more than plain common sense..

“To me, paying taxes is like having a sound technique in cricket,” he said “It helps you grow and stay in the game for a longer time. If you don’t pay taxes you are like people who come, make a few quick hundreds, without technique. But they have sugared this disagreeable truth with a coating of social morality. In a series of cannily conceived adverts, written by Ogilvy and Mather and a local company, popular icons spelled out why paying taxes matters.Classical musician Ustad Amjad Ali Khan said: “We need to start seeing taxes as a kind of donation to a good cause. I tend to see taxes as an offering towards the betterment of society.”The cricketer Kapil Dev offered an even sunnier analysis.

From today, dramatic enforcement action will commence, with 300 per cent fines and jail sentences for the guilty.The government seems to have grasped the fact that most people pay taxes because it is too difficult to do otherwise. “Until recently, the highest rates of tax were absurdly high,” he said, “as high as 80 or 90 per cent. People didn’t pay because the government was seen to be pouring money down the drain. They would say, why should I pay when no one else bothers? We’ve been waiting for good government and for other people to take the initiative before we started paying.”Nobody is claiming that the quality of government has improved dramatically. But a newly amended clause in the Income Tax Act requiring residents of 12 major cities who fulfil at least two of four criteria – owning a flat, a car or a telephone, or travelling abroad – to file tax returns. And to encourage compliance, the Income Tax Department has been gathering data on high spenders – through the telephone monopoly, international airports, car finance and leasing companies, the Cellphone Operators’ Association – and feeding the data into the department’s computers in Mumbai.They gave defaulters until 31 December to come forward. An engineer earning more than pounds 5,000 a year – a very healthy salary here – explained why.

Many of India’s most glaring problems – its crumbling hospitals and woeful education system, for example – stem from the poverty of its public finances. Even after the end of the VDIS, two-thirds of working Indians – the farmers – pay no income tax at all. But it is arguable that this year’s amnesty marks a watershed in people’s attitude to coughing up.Until now, not paying, and not feeling bad about not paying, have been the norm at all levels of society. Even one or two multinational companies, which had evaded tax by partially paying their employees’ salaries abroad, were owning up to their misdeeds.From a European perspective, the amounts of income tax collected in India have been preposterously small. Out of a population of more than 950 million, only 12 million – 1.26 per cent – are assessed for tax or file tax returns, and of that number only 12,000 earn more than pounds 15,000 per year. Then suddenly, following a series of powerful advertisements featuring famous figures from sport and showbusiness, and alarmist magazine articles about the government’s new data collecting powers, the trickle turned into a flood.Last week, it was announced that the highest single declarant, in Hyderabad, had owned up to assets of more than pounds 89m, on which he had paid the stipulated 30 per cent tax (the lowest rate ever) People were declaring their fathers’ Swiss bank accounts.