Darpan letter · No. 199 October 2026

The sun takes water only to return it

On a GST Council that chose trust over the threat of arrest, a monsoon that fell short by 12.6% before a strong El Niño, Kālidāsa’s picture of a king who taxed like the sun, and the Gītā’s portrait of a mind that fear does not move

प्रिय साथी,

Two stories in today’s magazine are about fear, though only one uses the word. In the first, the 57th GST Council, meeting after 13 months, recommended that GST officers lose the power to arrest a person before prosecution. The threshold for prosecution rises from ₹1 crore to ₹5 crore, the general penalty falls from ₹25,000 to ₹10,000, disputes below ₹10,000 will get no show-cause notice, and 90% of a refund will be sanctioned automatically within three working days. At least four States objected that arrest was a deterrent, and then agreed. In the second story, the World Meteorological Organization says a strong El Niño will last into 2027, just after India’s monsoon ended with a 12.6% deficit, 759.4 mm against a long period average of 868.6 mm, the driest in 11 years. One story is about a State deciding how much fear to use. The other is about a season that gives you something to fear.

You know both kinds. There is the fear someone puts on you: a teacher, a family, a coaching test that ranks you every Sunday. And there is the fear that comes from outside anyone’s control: a bad year, a cut-off that rises, a paper set in a way nobody expected. India’s old books did not pretend that fear is unreal. They asked a more useful question: what work can be done well without it?

Start with the tax story, because it has a very old answer. Kālidāsa, describing King Dilīpa in the first canto of the Raghuvaṃśa, writes: प्रजानामेव भूत्यर्थं स ताभ्यो बलिमग्रहीत्। सहस्रगुणमुत्स्रष्टुमादत्ते हि रसं रविः॥ — prajānām eva bhūtyarthaṃ sa tābhyo balim agrahīt, sahasraguṇam utsraṣṭum ādatte hi rasaṃ raviḥ — “Only for the prosperity of his people did he take tax from them; for the sun draws up water only to pour it back a thousandfold” (Raghuvaṃśa 1.18). Bali here means the king’s share, the tax. Look at the picture. The sun does not frighten the sea into giving up its water. It warms it, lifts it, and returns it as rain. A tax that comes back as roads, schools and refunds paid on time is collected the way the sun collects water. The poet’s point is not that a king should be soft. It is that the purpose of taking decides whether taking is just.

That is the real argument inside the GST decision, and it is worth seeing both sides, as an examiner will want you to. A Ministry of Finance official is quoted as saying that “every risk has a cost and arrest is also a risk”: an honest trader held on suspicion pays a price the State never repays. The States that objected had a fair worry too: rings that issue fake invoices disappear quickly, and a slower prosecution may recover nothing. The answer the Council chose is to replace fear with evidence and data: an officer must now build a case before taking anyone to court. That is harder work for the officer and kinder work for the citizen. Kālidāsa would recognise it. The sun has to do the lifting.

Now the second fear, the one nobody imposes. A 12.6% shortfall in rain is not anyone’s punishment, and El Niño is not aimed at you. Yet it reaches every kitchen: today’s economy card shows edible-oil prices at a three-and-a-half-year high, and the same warm Pacific is expected to cut palm yields after a lag of eight to twelve months. A farmer in a dry district cannot argue with the sky. What he can choose is the state of his own mind while he decides what to sow. The Gītā describes that mind in its second chapter: दुःखेष्वनुद्विग्नमनाः सुखेषु विगतस्पृहः। वीतरागभयक्रोधः स्थितधीर्मुनिरुच्यते॥ — duḥkheṣv anudvigna-manāḥ sukheṣu vigata-spṛhaḥ, vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodhaḥ sthita-dhīr munir ucyate — “One whose mind is not shaken in sorrow, who does not crave pleasures, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady wisdom” (Bhagavad Gītā 2.56).

Notice the order of the three things that sage is free from: rāga, bhaya, krodha, attachment, fear, anger. They are listed together because they feed each other. You are attached to a result, so you fear losing it; when the fear comes true, it turns into anger, at the paper, the system, yourself. The verse does not say that sorrow will not come. It says duḥkheṣu, in sorrows, the mind is anudvigna, not thrown into agitation. Sthita-dhī means a mind that stands where it is. A bad monsoon is a fact. A shaken mind on top of it is a second loss, and that one is optional.

How is such a mind built? Not by willpower on the day of crisis. A few verses earlier in the same chapter, Kṛṣṇa gives the method: योगस्थः कुरु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा धनञ्जय। सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्योः समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते॥ — yogasthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṃ tyaktvā dhanañjaya, siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṃ yoga ucyate — “Established in yoga, do your work, Arjuna, giving up attachment, and remaining the same in success and failure; this evenness is called yoga” (Bhagavad Gītā 2.48). Samatva, evenness, is a practice before it is a state. You become even by doing the work the same way on the good day and the bad day: the same hours, the same honest answer-writing, whether the last mock went well or badly.

Today’s agriculture card gives a warning about what happens when work is done only out of fear. When enforcement against stubble burning relied on polar satellites that pass between 10:30 am and 1:30 pm, a study found farmers shifting their fires to the evening. The government told the Lok Sabha that incidents fell 90% in 2025 against 2022; a multi-satellite estimate put the fall nearer 30%. Fear changed the time of the fire, not the fire. The same is true in your preparation. If you study only because a test is coming, you will learn to hide your gaps from the test. If you study because you want to know, you will go looking for them.

Let this make you proud of where you come from. Long before any finance ministry spoke of “trust-based administration”, an Indian poet asked a king to tax like the sun, and the Gītā taught a frightened prince that a steady mind is something you practise, not something you are born with. Today, a Council in which the Centre and every State sit together gave up a weapon by consensus, “in the interest of honest taxpayers”. A country of farmers that has lived with failing monsoons for thousands of years still sows every season. That stubbornness is part of your inheritance.

For your preparation. In GS3, link the 57th Council to Sections 69, 132 and 54 of the CGST Act and to the shift from coercion to compliance; Raghuvaṃśa 1.18 makes a strong opening line for any answer on the purpose of taxation. In GS2, use the four objecting States who agreed as a live example of cooperative federalism under Article 279A. In GS1 geography and GS3 agriculture, keep the IMD categories ready: below 90% of the long period average is “deficient”, and 2026 at about 87% falls there. In GS4, 2.56 and 2.48 give you two clean ways to explain equanimity and emotional intelligence in a public servant facing a crisis.

And now about you. Tonight, write down one fear you are carrying, plainly, in a single line. Then write next to it the one piece of work that is in your hands tomorrow regardless of how that fear turns out. Do that work first. Samatva is not a feeling you wait for; it is the habit of doing the same good work whatever the sky does.

One day you may sit in a tax office with the power to make honest people afraid, or in a district headquarters in a drought year with a thousand anxious farmers outside. On that day, remember the sun. It takes, but only to give back more; and it does not shake when the clouds fail to come. Sthita-dhīḥ: let your mind stand where it is, and let your work be rain for someone.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Raghuvaṃśa 1.18 · Bhagavad Gītā 2.56 · Bhagavad Gītā 2.48