India is known for its exquisitely diversified agriculture to which farmer is buttressed. 23% of GDP is procured from agriculture after quenching the needs of the populace. The farmers are the least favored and most tormented mankind. They end their day with the dirty clothes drenched in sweat and filth, working all the hours that God sends. The farmers never imagined the worst and dirtiest day to arrive that not only shook their feet but also the business and other professions base. The farmers are customary to start all together from the beginning and getting ready for sowing new seeds for the next season. The business and professions are in utter need to elevate from the existing economic depression and start devising for the upcoming economy.
As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) mentioned, the digital business pertains to a whole new economy and not a part of the existing economy. Post-COVID, the existing economy shows signs of the outdated economy, and the OECD’s exploration has become unquestionable. The business and farmers are antithetical but they should band together to adopt an approach for ushering to reach a stable economy, sufficing the attributes of COVID aftermath. For instance, when farmer’s crops are rotten due to infertile seeds or seeds are rotten they swap it with new seed and keep adding the adequate fertilizers to it. They keep a track of the growth and nutrient, avoiding excessive fertilizers and insects. The business should also swap with the new model and become the watcher to the growth of the economy against the virus.
In light of the ongoing state of affairs, the business has to one-eighty the approach towards the market. The market approach should be revamped from a customer-centered approach to a widened approach which inculcates the comfort and security to the customer. The author has nomenclature the approach as a “Comfort Market Approach (CMA)”. The CMA is an extended genre of a customer-centered approach. The COVID has concocted fierce against the virus, monetary security, and well-being, thereby making contactless as the grundnorm.
CMA: UP TO THE MINUTE APPROACH
The world has acknowledged the shift of the physical market to the digital market. The rationale behind remodeling is the contactless transactions backed by social distancing and the comfort of the availing door to door delivery. The CMA approach has two sharp attributes, it being money and comfort. The approach stimulates the dual benefit in rem. The approach demands the businessman to consider the customer’s comfort of getting delivery at doors, contactless transaction, security, and relevance of purchase with surety. The approach tends to reciprocate the benefits to the businessman also.
The market at a stretch has been eschewing purchases and expenses to meet financial stability and security. The money flow in the market is at downfall and has become one of the foremost reasons for failures in the economy. The money has been segregated at one end without repositioning it to the other end of the market. The businessman should have the foremost approach, under CMA, to provide such services or goods or both which entices customers and impels them to spend money on the purchase. This can be possible only after block building security and wellbeing. The author has molded the approach according to the COVID market scenarios and uprisal of a nascent economy. Long story short, the businessman should have an approach that generates money and its flow in the market, thereby assuring a sense of security and comfort to the customers.
INCH BAGGING THE BUSINESS
The International Monetary Funds have got hold of India’s shrinking economy by 4.5% after the ingress of COVID. This has been the lowest since the year 1961. IMF has been affirmative of the fact that India’s growth rate will inflate by 6% in 2021. The businessman has to INCH bag the long term goals and BUG-OUT bag the short term goals. Both the bags refers to survival kits, former carries around all the quintessential for a long term wilderness and the later carries the quintessential for a temporal situation. The BUG OUT bag, concerning the business and economy, refers to the formulating the model of business and product/ service from scratch by stretching the brands and catering the nascent needs even at the cost of reshuffling production lines or without. The business has to adapt the troubling marbles like chameleons.
The INCH bag act as the most essential component for giving life and stability to the process carried out in BUG-OUT bag. The spirit of the INCH bag is comprised within the 4 letter word itself, stating as:
I – Impelling customers
N – Nesting Relationship with the customers
C – Customer Satisfaction
H – Heedful of a variant
The business should impel the customer to spend money on the product/ service by alluring it with the attached incentives and comfort. The business should not only focus on fulfilling customer’s needs but also on nesting a harmonious relationship between both. The business should interrogate into the market and look for their whereabouts followed by uncovering the quench of the customer and satisfying it to an extremity. The H in the INCH bag is the vertebrae to the spine. The business should study the variables in the market every millisecond. The variants, during an ongoing economic earthquake, should be treated as an ocean instead of a pond.
DIGITALLY CHALLENGED?
India is a developing country having the third-highest Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) with China and U.S.A having 1st and 2nd position. Purchasing Power Parity is idolized as the sign of healthy economies. COVID has left every economy to ache awfully. The economy thereafter has become dependent on the digitally modeled business. It has been noticed that there is a surge in the functioning of digitally operated business, post-COVID, thereby keeping up with the PPP. The astonishing event being the higher surge in the developing countries in comparison with the developed country. India has seen humungous usage of the digital platform not only used for streaming but also for coping up with the routine chores. Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, etc have been used exorbitantly, creating revenue for their respective nations.
The nations are connected and have been walking hand in hand to fight against the COVID. The question arises till when? Recently, there is a cold war going on between nations regarding the unilateral measures taken to tax the digital income. In the period, where the nations are expected to hold up each other, they are waging cold wars against each other. Every nation’s government is assembling the tax amount for smoothly running the economy and granting loans to start-ups and other businesses.
Many counties including France, Spain, U.K, India, etc. have undertaken the unilateral measure to tax the digitally created income. The source countries have claimed that the profits earned by the company, digitally, should be taxed in their jurisdiction based on the hypothesis of value creation, instead of being taxed in the host country (native nation of the digitally operated business). There exists no explicit international law acting as a grundnorm for taxing the income derived from the digitally operated business. The OECD has been employed at finding the solution for the issue for about a decade. The nations, in order to boost the revenue of the economy, opted for the unilateral move over multilateralism.
SELF-PROCLAIMED WAR BY THE US
It was in April when OECD ordered the global tax authorities to exercise digital communication instead of physical contact, the nations were persuaded to believe that OECD won’t be deriving at the conclusion of taxing digitally modeled business. The nations examined the ongoing market stimuli and conceived the idea of opting for the unilateral measure in the advent of excessive usage of the digital platform due to COVID.
The above-stated facts will make countries to tax the income generated from the digital platform that ought to be taxed in their respective countries instead of the host countries. U.S.A. has been opposing the imposition of tax on Facebook and other U.S.A. based company as they lay the foundation for revenue in the U.S.A. The U.S.A. has waged the trade war against countries like India, the UK, China, etc. claiming the endorsement of the unilateral action to be against the WTO articles and violating the principle of non-discrimination under GATT.
The point flagged by the U.S.A. does not form the mere ground for violating the WTO and international trade laws. Article 20 clause (a) and (b) of GATT bestows the exceptions upon the member state. The combined reading of both the clause legitimates the unilateral measures availed by nations to protect the public morals, humans, animals, or plant life or health. The COVID is an emergency and hence subclause (iii) of clause (b) of Article 21 gives protection to all the countries against whom the U.S.A. have waged a war.
CONCLUSION
The world together is facing a lethal pandemic and therefore the U.S.A. should co-operate with the world instead of holding grudges against them. The utter need of the time is to revamp the business mechanism by using Comfort-Money Approach and prepare the INCH bag for the convalescent business. The principal focus should be on adapting the new economy effectively and efficiently followed by yielding a better harvest.