Successful decentralisation relies heavily on the ability of subnational government to generate its own revenue. In many African countries, subnational government is authorised to collect a variety of taxes and user fees including trade licensing taxes, property taxes, market fees, garbage collection fees and road user fees. With the exception of property taxes, which have the potential to generate significant revenue, most other taxes collectively fund a very small proportion of subnational government budgets. Until recently, one of the main sources of own revenue for subnational government in Uganda was a poll tax known as graduated tax. Tanzania and Kenya had a similar tax, referred to respectively as the development levy and graduated personal tax. However, the tax was abolished in Kenya in 1974, in Tanzania in 2003 and in Uganda in 2005. The reasons for abolishing the tax in the three countries were similar, and included the fact that it relied on coercive enforcement, the costs of collection were quite high and it disproportionately affected the poor. In Uganda, however, there have recently been callswithin and outside governmentfor the reintroduction of the tax. Our research seeks to answer the question: what explains the calls for the introduction of a tax that was largely unpopular? We find two main explanations. First, graduated tax was the main source of revenue for local government in Uganda and there has been no adequate replacement for it. Second, the tax was a symbol of pride for some men, and encouraged productivity. Womenparticularly in rural areasfeel that its abolition reduced the productivity of men.
The Company and Directors'Duties 451 the majority to implement the socialist aspirations of the Constitution it is also in the public interest litigation tradition. A note on a single case is not an appropriate context for a full-fledged discussion of judicial activism. However, it would seem right to bear in mind differences of legal culture, rather than assume that the English debate can simply be transported to India and remain valid. The legislatures of developing countries are very often ineffectual; in other words, it cannot be assumed that what the judges will not do Parliament will do and the will of the people will be implemented. True, the situation in India is rather better than in many African countries where lawyers' law legislation is a rarity indeed. But even in India it can take a long time for legislative proposals to reach the statute book. This of course does not mean that the judges automatically become endowed with the vision to know what the will of the people would be if only it were to be legislated! What it does perhaps mean is that it is not always true to say: "If Parliament had meant this they would have done it." This case demonstrates, however, that the "activist" sections of the Indian judiciary are not simply holding themselves out as doing what Parliament would have done if only it had had the time. Above both the judges and Parliament looms the Constitution. And the very existence of a constitution sets some bounds to the law, and gives to the judiciary an enhanced role. But the Indian Constitution goes further than setting bounds; it contains positive mandates. The judiciary, conscious of the shortcomings of the legislative process, have very often set themselves the task of trying to carry out the constitutional mandates, within the limits of the judicial role-and those limits are far wider than the English judiciary could conceive. Chinnappa Reddy J observed extrajudicially , "it is not the Judiciary, but the Parliament and the Executive that have failed the people". 95 The Ramakrishnan case is an example, minor perhaps in its likely individual impact, but still interesting, of the judiciary responding, as Chinnappa Reddy J went on to put it, "to the call of progress". 96 JILL COTTRELL
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