The statement made during the budget, presented by Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in parliament on February 28, evoked an emphatic response from the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an avid practitioner of yoga. Modi had proposed the celebration of an International Yoga Day, during his speech at the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on September 27, 2014, and a resolution was passed to the same effect in December that year, supported by 175 of 193 UN member nations.
Jaitley remarked, “Yoga is India’s well acknowledged gift to the world. It is proposed to include Yoga within the ambit of charitable purpose under Section 2(15) of the Income-tax Act.” Modi thumped the desk in the Lok Sabha on hearing the statement, a gesture of approval.
“Further, to mitigate the problem being faced by many genuine charitable institutions, it is proposed to modify the ceiling on receipts from activities in the nature of trade, commerce or business to 20% of the total receipts from the existing ceiling of Rs.25 lakh. A national database of non profit organizations is also being developed,” Jaitley said.
“The institutions which, as part of genuine charitable activities, undertake activities like publishing books or holding programme on yoga or other programmes as part of actual carrying out of the objects which are of charitable nature are being put to hardship due to first and second proviso to section 2(15),” he added.
India’s budget, eagerly looked forward to since the election of the “reform-oriented” Modi government last May, was generally received positively, with most commentators referring to it as an important step in upgrading Indian infrastructure and infusing investment.
International Yoga Day will be celebrated on June 21 this year, the Summer Solstice, as proposed by Modi in his UNGA speech. The Indian government has already called for ideas on the celebration of the day, with Modi taking to twitter, asking people to “share your ideas and inputs on marking the first ever `International Day of Yoga`.” Some state governments have also begun introducing yoga in school curriculum.
