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At a time when the government seems to be entering our lives uninvited and unsolicited, there are large areas of our life that the state is receding from without a whimper of public protest or attention. The pattern is clear and consistent, and it is taking place in plain sight.Every time you buy a water or air purifier your government has failed to provide you a service it has charged you for as a taxpayer. Every time you visit a private hospital for a routine medical treatment or put your child in a private school, the government has denied you a public service it has taken your money for. Every time you walk past a private security guard outside a house or an office you know your government isn’t performing one of its fundamental duties.As the list of such private solutions to public failures keeps growing, bare necessities of life have turned into luxuries – clean air and water, healthcare, education and security are available to only those who can pay for it. Even the poorest of the poor pay for these services in the form of indirect taxes.The consequences of the state receding from such duties are no less grave than those from state-led privacy invasion – if there is such an invasion. Some of the areas government has withdrawn from represent the basic functions of a state right from the time mankind formed the first government some 3,000 years before Christ. Even today, these are the functions governments can, and do, perform most efficiently and equitably.Apart from the injustice and inequality it breeds, private funding of public services takes a toll on family savings and endangers financial security of the middle class and the poor. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that Indians have spent at least Rs 30,000 crore over time on just four public services that should have come to them free as a taxpayer ( see illustration below). The recurring annual expense to keep these services going is at least Rs 5,000 crore. With every passing day, more and more people are forced to find market solutions for public failure, taking crores of rupees out of private savings. That’s a criminal waste of household finances in a country whose per capita income is still lower than Sudan’s.Inability to perform basic functions denies government the moral right to tax people. Yet, both the Centre and state governments have imposed additional taxes to perform functions that should have been funded from regular tax revenues. One example is Delhi government’s green tax. Introduced in 2015, the Rs 700 to Rs 2,600 Environment Compensation Charge is meant to punish and discourage polluting commercial vehicles. It’s unclear how much the charge has reduced air pollution in Delhi, but there is clear proof that collection of this tax creates traffic jams and harassment at Delhi borders every day.By causing congestion, the tax adds to the pollution it is meant to mitigate and the green fund created out of the charge has barely been used. The people being punished with the tax are not transporters that have polluting vehicles but consumers who pay a higher price for the products these vehicles carry. Taxing a polluting vehicle is not a fight against pollution, it is profiteering from pollution. A clear and non-extendable deadline to ensure a smooth phase-out of all polluting vehicles could have been called an anti-pollution measure.But sins of state governments pale when compared to the Centre’s. Since 2004-05, Union government has imposed a 2% education cess on every single tax Indians pay. It’s paid by the poorest of the poor too. Over time the rate of cess has doubled to 4%. In 15 years during which Indians have paid over Rs 2.5 lakh crore as education cess what has happened? There is anecdotal and factual evidence to show that the country is more dependent on private education than ever before. This is true for private healthcare too.Why have we come to expect so little of our government’s fundamental duties? There are more Indians who expect their government to ban a film or a book than provide them with basic services it ought to.Part of the explanation lies in our obsession with the central gover nment and indifference towards local governments. The spread of television and online news which, unlike newspapers, cover very little local news, has amplified the farsightedness on governance.Most failures of public services are happening at the state and municipal levels where accountability is neither in demand nor in supply. Most people remember the promises the prime minister has made but won’t recall a single commitment their corporator would have made during municipal elections – unmindful of the fact that many of the prime minister’s promises can’t be fulfilled unless the local government delivers.In a small measure, the neglect may have something to do with excessive focus on caste, religion and ideology in public debate, which crowds out space for stories on governance. One way to force attention on basic governance is to demand constituency-wise manifestos before elections. Every parliamentary and assembly constituency could prepare a manifesto that lists, among other things, inadequacies in public services – from power cuts to potholes on the roads to crime rate. Parties and candidates should provide plans to improve these services and be rated on their plan and its execution. This would be a better way to ushering in acche din.Views expressed here are the author's own, and not EconomicTimes.com's