AJAY MANKOTIA, IRS: Exclusive Interview

AJAY MANKOTIA, IRS (INDIAN REVENUE SERVICE –INCOME TAX) OFFICER OF 1982 BATCH, TALKS TO ‘THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVANT’ ABOUT HIS LIFE AND EXPERIENCES. THE EXCERPTS;

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 Please tell us about your early life and educational background?

AJAY MANKOTIA: Let me begin with saying that my father was in the Indian Air Force, he was a Transport Pilot and use to fly the Dakota, Buckets, A- 12, Cargos and so every 2-3 years he would be posted to the new station and off course the family would move with him. So my schooling has been, I won’t call it irregular, but it changed very frequently over the years. I started my school in the Wellington in the Nilgiris district of Tamilnadu, where my father was doing a course at the Defense Services Staff College. Thereafter, I went to South Point School Kolkata, then Bal Bharati in Delhi, Mount St. Marry in Delhi, St. Johns in Chandigarh. And then finally in 1970, when my father was posted to Guwahati as the Station Commander there, the family decided that my mother and the three children, I have a brother, I have a sister, would stay back in Delhi, rent a house and finish our schooling in Delhi. So I passed out of the Air Force central school, Delhi Cantonment, where I there for 4 years. Later, I preferred to pursue my BA (Hon.) in the Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, and MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and then over the years I acquired an M.Phil Degree and diploma in international economic relations from the University of Paris. I also did my LLB from evening classes of faculty of Law, Delhi University during the course of my career. So it’s been a very-very interesting and exciting journey in acquiring knowledge that I have had.

What prompted you to take up Civil Services as a career option?

AJAY MANKOTIA: So like I said we were infused with the sense of public service from the very beginning when my father was in the Air force and I was always very keen to join the Government of India. Hence, after my Post Graduation, I took the UPSC exam. I off course preferred an option for the IAS and IFS but didn’t get a higher score for those services. But I got the IRS-Income Tax Service, which too I had opted for. I think amongst all the Civil Services, Income-Tax Service is probably the best one from various angles.

What are the salient features of Income tax Department in India? Is IRS fulfilling the expectations of a common man?

AJAY MANKOTIA: One service which has a very-very vital, immediate and intimate connect with the nation and with the common man is the tax service. It is this connection which can than enable one to do a useful service towards the nation building. Let me elaborate it further. IRS is not only about revenue generation but also about industrial development, regional development, export promotion, encouragement of savings etc. There are so many things, so many purposes that can be accomplished with the proper policies and regulations which IRS can adopt and use for the betterment of the nation. And as far as the individual taxpayer is concerned there are so many things we can do to make taxes reasonable, make taxpaying painless exercise, and make the department transparent and responsive. Somebody very rightly said that taxes should be collected like a honey bee collects nectar from the flower, without destroying the flower. That’s the goal, that’s the ambition of the department to collect taxes in a manner which a fair and transparent and not to harass a taxpayer.
    So I thought with these goals the tax department would be the best fit for the kind of the work I wanted to do. We have a world class IRS training Institute in Nagpur. There we taught Law, we taught accounts, we taught management, we taught administration.  We are exposed to the best practices of revenue administration in the world. We as a part of the training are also sent abroad for a short extent so you know exactly what happening outside. During the course of the service, there is again much training; these are conducted abroad so you are exposed to the best in the world. The kind of work that you handle in the Tax Department from assessments to appeals to policy making to administration, it’s just mind boggling. The work is very-very interesting such as to investigating accounts, finding of concealment from the accounts. On a raid, trying to find out where valuables are hidden. When you doing policy making in the Central Board of Direct Taxes finding out what kind of policies will suit the country what kind of priority we have. For example when I was in Delhi, I was handling a big market there, handling shops. I went to Bombay; there I was handling big public sector banks and Financial Institutions and Foreign Companies. You know a switch from a small market Delhi to the other end of the corporate ladder. Then I came to Allahabad; there I was handling the appeal cases of Stone Crushers, Bricks Kilns etc. I went to Banaras handling temple trusts. When I was in Bombay I handled the Harshad Mehta’s scam. So the sheer kind of work profile that you deal with is interesting and educative. It’s a very-very indigenous experience. These are the kind of you know extremely inducing pleasurable work that we do. Also off course, we should mind the fact that we shouldn’t be harassing assesses. So after retirement also the kind of experience you have, the kind of exposure you have, the kind of things you had taught, can stand in a very-very good state for you. Post retirement, I am practicing now; there are people who join companies, there are people who join legal firms very very prestigious one’s, accountancy firms, there are people who join settlement commission or the authority for advance ruling so the kind of job opportunities you get after retirement are again huge.

Why are people skeptical about the functioning of the tax department? Why are you perceived as a sadistic harassment agency?

AJAY MANKOTIA: You know the thing is that people have a very-very wrong perception about the tax-man. The tax-man, most people think of, as a figure, which looks in the dark and keeps bouncing on. Let me remove this misconception and demystify the person known as a tax man. I wrote a book recently called “There’s Seven for You, Three for Me”. It’s a book which lifts the curtain of ignorance that people have about the tax-man. It’s not a book on tax, it’s a book on tax-man. This side is very racy, it’s irreverent, and it’s humorous as a counter balance to the kind of serious work we do. So my book will demystify lots of misconceptions people have about the tax-man and I urge you all to read it and it’s available on Amazon. You know the IRS department is very keen that the tax man also to do other things than collecting tax only. So we have the central revenue sports board which promotes sports and culture and literally activities in the department. And you won’t believe it that there are many-many tax-man literally who are just outstanding in literature, painting, in dancing, in music.  I will narrate one anecdote to you here. There was this music club, that I had joined that use to meet every month by rotation at people’s houses so one lady became a member of this and it was her turn to host the monthly gathering. So we went to her house and she was married to a businessman, so the moment she heard that I am a tax-man she actually had a fainted fall. My friends told her not to worry that I was a retired person now. So she became normal and asked me a very strange wizard question which later on I realized was something which is pretty common and most of the people think like that about us. She said ok fine you are a tax man but ‘how can you sing’. So you know this is something she made it in all its seriousness. Another interesting happening is when I went for a medical procedure few years back. When I was on the operating table a very-very well-known doctor told me that he would give me an anesthetic shot in my spine and it will prick a little bit, so just be prepared. So he plunged the needle in and it pained. He asked me was it alright? I said doctor it was painful. So he wearing a mask, peers down at my face, the operating lights at the back and he and his team says ‘Ok, now Mr. Mankotia you know how we feel when we go to the tax department’. And then we all, of course, laughed. But then I understood that this is a typical misconception that people have about us.

You say that IRS also conducts raids to recover ill gotten wealth? Would be interesting to know how do you do that?
AJAY MANKOTIA:  You know that the people have devised the most innovative ways in which they hide their cash, their valuables etc. It’s a battle of wits. It’s very-very interesting the way these things unfold and things so typical of Indian households come to the fore in these raids. There’s jewelry being found in somebody’s room, tax man being requested by that particular person not to reveal what you found to the other members of the family. Or cash having being found which is the wife’s spin money which the husband is also not aware of, some jewelry which the husband is not aware of, the cash topples out from her almirah or from her cluster in the kitchen or from under the saries, so you know these types of things are very very typical in the raids. It’s a very thankless kind of a job. We feel very-very uncomfortable about it but somebody has to do it. It’s something that happens rarely. It’s the biggest kind of infringement of somebody’s rights. We are not very happy about it. We are uncomfortable, but we do it in a professional manner, we do it to the best of our ability. We conducted a raid in middle of 1980’s in the state of U.P. and this was a raid against a local politician. When you raid a person, you are supposed to get two respectable witnesses from the locality. So we asked them to get such witnesses. After 2-3 hours in the raid there were around 500 people who turned up and surrounded the place shouting income-tax department  Hye Hye Murdabad Murdabad . It’s something typical in the life of the tax-man. You may have seen the movie ‘Raid”; it’s not a figment or somebody’s imagination. It actually happened; it’s off course, an amalgam of 2 to 3 raids that the film was about including this raid in which the crowd surrounded. Such raids can be very dangerous at times, dogs can be sent on the team. Making sure that you do the right thing that you don’t misuse your powers; make sure that you are absolutely transparent and up-right and honest is very-very critical.

 What made you take VRS and leave service prematurely?   Were you looking alternate avenues to fulfill your creative dreams?

AJAY MANKOTIA: In 2008, I decided to take VRS and I then joined a Media Company as President Corporate Planning and Operations, where I was handling various assignments. In December, 2017, I finally retired from this Company also and now I have set-up my own tax and legal advisory firm. I have thoroughly enjoyed my association with the IRS and also the media firm I joined. Now I am of my own and liking it. I write, go around the world, sing and fulfill all my creative desires. That’s how the life has unfolded for me and has given me immense satisfaction.

View his exclusive interview on official channel of The Indian Civil Servant. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA6Bkq3sHAM&t=89s

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