PRESSURE TO COLLECT
Since Modi came to power in 2014, he has made fighting fraud and tax evasion a top goal, saying he wanted to break previous cosy ties between policymakers and rich capitalists.
His administration has targeted banks and heavily indebted businesses and tracked down rich fugitives hiding out in other countries - popular policies that helped him win a second-term in a landslide election victory in May.
While many government officials and business leaders agree that regulations need to be more strictly enforced, they also say the government has been overzealous, making business leaders too fearful to invest and endangering the health of the economy.
In particular, they are concerned that enforcement agencies increasingly go after loan defaulters without differentiating between genuine business failures and corrupt practices.
"Any enforcement agency first looks at you as a crook," said J.N. Gupta, a former executive director at India's capital markets regulator, adding that the loss of Siddhartha's life was a very sad moment but one that was giving India an opportunity to find out what had gone wrong with the system.
"We have a very thin line between duty and harassment. The enforcement agencies fail to realise that sometimes their zeal could be seen as harassment."
Tax collectors are also under pressure, government sources familiar with the matter have said, declining to be identified as they were not authorised to speak on the matter.
With economic growth at a five-year low and keen to fund more public spending, the government has set an income tax target of 13.35 trillion rupees ($193 billion) for this fiscal year, some 15% higher than last year.
The general distrust of businesses is very high in the bureaucracy, said Pratibha Jain, a partner at law firm Nishith Desai Associates which advises corporate clients on tax and investigation matters.
"Tax authorities are keeping focus only on corporations and individuals to meet their revenue base, rather than looking at it in a fair manner which requires widening the tax base to get tax evaders to pay up," she said. ($1 = 69.0770 Indian rupees)
