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It is a misconception that you would be imposed 200% penalty if you declare your income now. Let us have a look at the relevant provision i.e. Section 270A of the Income Tax Act’1961:Penalty for under reporting and misreporting of income(1) The Assessing Officer or the Commissioner (Appeals) or the Principal Commissioner or Commissioner may, during the course of any proceedings under this Act, direct that any person who has under-reported his income shall be liable to pay a penalty in addition to tax, if any, on the under-reported income.(2) A person shall be considered to have under-reported his income, if the income assessed is greater than the income determined in the return processed under clause (a) of sub­section (1) of section 143; or the income assessed is greater than the maximum amount not chargeable to tax, where no return of income has been furnished;(3) The penalty referred to in sub-section (1) shall be a sum equal to fifty per cent of the amount of tax payable on under-reported income.Where under-reported income is in consequence of any misreporting thereof by any person, the penalty referred to in sub-section (1) shall be equal to two hundred per cent of the amount of tax payable on under-reported income.The provision of Section 270A was introduced only this year and it shall be applicable for the next assessment year 2017-2018 dealing with the present year income.It is clear from the provision that 50/200 percent penalty is applicable only if you report your income for the current financial year wrongly in the next year return. If you correctly declare your income, you pay simply 30% income tax at the highest rate.Your income for the previous years shall continue to be dealt with the old laws.Only if the illegal cash/income is recovered due to raids, the stricter provisions shall be applicable.Source: Issue of Imposition of Penalty u/s 270A of Income Tax Act,1961 | TaxGuru

Since I have passed RBI Grade B 2018 with AIR 67, I feel competent enough to answer this question.First I would share my marks-Prelims – 112.5Mains – 218.5Interview – 30Total – 248.5Before I give my strategy, I would like to tell that this is my personal strategy and I would not recommend to follow it blindly. Every person is different with different background and personal strengths. Hence, first I will give my background-I am a B.Tech (EXTC) student from VJTI College Mumbai and graduated in 2015. Since 2015, I have been preparing for UPSC Civil Services and had given 2 mains till RBI. I was decent in Quant and Reasoning and good in English. However, I had zero knowledge about Finance and Management. I failed to clear 2018 UPSC pre and hence decided to prepare for RBI. However, I started to prepare seriously only after the notification was out.STRATEGY-Time Management is very important for Prelims. You have to solve 200 questions in 2 hrs. From videos of previous years successful students, I learned this strategy and tried to implement in mock tests – 15-20 minutes for GA, 20-25 minutes for English, 30 minutes for Quant, 45 minutes for Reasoning and in the same order. I attempted all questions in English and 79 in GA. In quant I attempted 14 in my 30 minutes and then switched to Reasoning where I could manage 26 questions. I think this is a safe and easy strategy. Many ppl take reasoning first and then find themselves with little time for quant and fail to cleat the sectional cutoff. However, now there is sectional timing and hence it eases out the jobPRELIMS-After the notification is out, there is around 45 days’ time for prelims. Hence, first thing I did was jotting down the syllabus on my RBI diary. And then I analyzed it and identified the easy areas in Quant and Reasoning. My priority was to clear the cutoff and target easy questions. In quant there are 30 questions, here I targeted number series and DI i.e. diagram interpretation. These two account for atleast 10-15 questions. Thus atleast cutoff will be cleared. In reasoning, I targeted syllogisms, inequalities, directions, coded inequalities, data sufficiency. However, I completely left puzzles which account for 30 marks. Solving puzzles can take time and a small mistake can cost you valuable time and marks. I don’t recommend leaving puzzles but complete the easy questions first and then go to puzzles. I relied totally on YouTube for quant and reasoning and studied all types of questions related to targeted sections. Here, Amar sir videos can be helpful. However, don’t go for watching all the videos. Select a topic and then watch all conceptual videos related to it. Try to apply that in mocks.For English, I didn’t prepare anything but tried to solve all the questions as fast as I could. Here I followed this strategy as I was able to get 25+ marks in mocks. Those having problems can watch targeted videos on YouTube by just searching the syllabus.For GA, I will first list my sources. Gktoday monthly (one liner summary), Bankersadda capsule for RBI, Vision PT365 of Economy, Social Issues and Govt Schemes, IAS baba summary of Budget, Vision summary of Economic survey, Oliveboard pdf and Wikipedia for all national parks and imp sanctuaries, Sriram’s IAS Economy, One business newspaper (LiveMint is good). 4 months current affairs would suffice but focus more on immediate 2 months before the exam. I kept the material limited due to paucity of time but revised it regularly. Plus I made my own notes in my dedicated RBI notebook especially for budget, growth forecast predictions by various institutions, fund allocation by WB, IMF to various states and scheme, committees and reports- their chairman and cause for appointment.For mains I had around 25 days after pre due to Kerela floods. My 50% of the time went for FM. I watched Manish Kumar sir videos channel (Best material that is out there) and read Edutap notes that are available in the market. I prepared my own notes and this proved very helpful for last minute revision. Focus more on understanding concepts and the formulae will be done automatically. In exam there will be questions which you have not studied. Here you must try to solve them by elimination and applying your existing knowledge. Try to attempt all questions in ESI and FM.For ESI, you just have to revise your GA that you have read for prelims. I just revised it couple of times and prepared the current affairs of the new 25 days after pre. Please devote more time on govt schemes as lot of questions are based on them. However, in the paper, there were very trivial questions about old govt schemes. It is at such questions we are required to apply ourselves and try to eliminate wrong options.For Essays – Edutap comes out with 20-25 essay topics with fodder material. This will suffice. Only 1 out of 4 essay is to be written and just atleast prepare the 10 hot topics. You will definitely get essay out of it. At my time demonetization and financial inclusion came, both of which I had prepared. For any essay, make 4 para – Intro, Positives or opportunities, Negatives or challenges, and conclusion. This structure will work for most of the essays. Try to incorporate data, facts, quotes or committee recommendation in your essay. Other than essay, there is also precis and passage. However, it is important to stick to word limit. For e.g. for an essay of 300 words I completed in 298 words. Try to remain as close to word limit as possible. Avoid typos and grammatical mistakes as they will directly reduce your marks.I won’t discuss about interview as it is the easiest of the three stages and generally there is ample time to prepare. I will talk about it separately.It is important to remember to keep the approach simple. The exam is simple. However, we tend to make it complicate. Rely on limited material, revise it religiously, make your own notes, understand the concepts and attempt maximum questions.Best of luck to all the people preparing.

Philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Experience tells us that loan waivers have not been successful in solving the Indian farmers’ problems, so why should this time be any different? The root causes – lack of access to institutional credit, rising cost of inputs like seeds and pesticides required for farming, and the inability to receive remunerative prices – are not being addressed.What is the difference between a loan write-off and a loan waiver?Loan write-offs are not the same as loan waivers. A loan write-off is an accounting entry which banks make when they have determined it is unlikely a particular loan will be repaid. In this case, the loan is said to have become a non-performing asset (NPA) which no longer generates any income.For more accurate reporting of income from period to period, banks maintain a contra-asset account in the balance sheet known the loan loss reserve. The value of the loan loss reserve is based on the amount that is not expected to be recovered in the future, and is determined with reference to historical information on loan defaults. Loan loss provisions are recorded in the income statement as an expense to adjust the loan loss reserve so that it is sufficient to cover expected defaults. This reduces pre-tax income.When the loan is finally written off at the end of this process, only balance sheet accounts are affected, namely the loan loss reserve and outstanding loan. This is recorded as a debit to the to loan loss reserve and a credit to the outstanding loan. Consequently, the net portfolio on balance sheet is unchanged. From this, it can be seen that the primary purpose of a loan write-off is to remove NPAs from the books and keep things tidy.On the other hand, a loan waiver is a promise by the bank not to insist on its strict legal right to recover the loan according to the original terms of the loan contract. Therefore, once the bank has waived a loan, it cannot turn around and insist that the borrower should pay because it has already relinquished its right to do so and will be estopped by the court if it tries to do so. By contrast, a loan write-off does not amount to a waiver, and the bank can continue to pursue the borrower.Why are people upset about the loan waiver?Firstly, banks ostensibly benefited more than farmers from the 2008 Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme (“2008 waiver”). The Indian government provided banks with Rs 60,000 crore reimbursement over three years in the midst of the global financial crisis. This allowed them to recover otherwise unrecoverable non-performing agricultural loans, many of which had been given out to meet the priority sector lending requirement but had gone bad because of, inter alia, the risks inherent in agriculture.[1]Yet, the 2008 waiver did not benefit small and marginal farmers greatly, as they relied more on informal sources of credit like moneylenders, landlords or relatives. A 2005 report by the NSSO on farmer indebtedness based on 2003 data showed that only 23% of farmers with ownership holdings of land less than 0.01 hectares had access to formal credit, and this figure rose to 58% for farmers with ownership holdings of land between 1-2 hectares.[2]More recently, the 2017 NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey reported that 40% of loans continue to be taken from. Respondents cited ease of availability, no stringent timelines for repayment, no documentation formalities required, lower or no interest expected, and faith in families and friends as reasons why they preferred to take loans from non-institutional sources.[3]Secondly, the criteria used to limit the beneficiaries of 2008 waiver did not adequately consider the socioeconomic reality of farmers. Under the 2008 waiver, 100% of the overdues owed to small and marginal farmers in “ownership” of “up to 2 hectares of land”, and 25% of the overdues of larger farmers were waived.[4]Banks generally require land title as a guarantee, which meant that sharecroppers, tenant farmers and labourers who did not own land were excluded. On a related note, critics have pointed out that the land ownership requirement means that landlords are more well positioned to benefit from a loan waiver than the sharecroppers who actually cultivate the land.[5] Sharecropping agreements involve the landlord permitting the sharecropper to farm on a parcel of land in exchange for a portion of the crop.[6]Consequently, sharecroppers often have to borrow money from moneylenders to invest in their crop so that they give their dues to the landlord. However, as they do not own the land, they fall outside the purview of loan waivers. To tackle this issue, the Indian government responded by rolling out another scheme, “Bhoomi Heen Kisan” in 2014 to provide Rs. 8 lakh crores credit support ( basically, more loans!) to 5 lakh joint farming groups.[7]Agricultural land in rural India is often jointly held[8]by family members and more likely to exceed 2 hectares. Similarly, some farmers may have larger holdings, not because they are richer but because their land is less productive. For example, an opinion piece published in The Hindu[9] shed light on how in Vidharba, the average landholding size is 3.03 hectares, and up to 50 per cent of Vidharba’s farmers were above the two-hectare criterion for the 100% waiver. This was not because they were big landlords but because their land was less productive. By contrast, the farmers of Western Maharashtra with smaller, well-irrigated and more productive holdings who were better off in most regards, were more likely to meet the two-hectare criterion and therefore stood to gain more from the waiver.If that weren’t bad enough, it is not inconceivable that corrupt bank officials will ensure that only a fraction of the allocated money reaches the already limited pool of loan waiver beneficiaries. In a survey on the IRDP loan program implemented in 1980, 67% of the beneficiary respondents reported that they had paid a bribe for the loan to be sanctioned.[10]Thirdly, loan waivers encourage a bad credit culture that hurts both banks and farmers. Honest farmers are penalized for repaying their loans on time when defaulters get their loans waived. Some of them who realize this may decide to go rogue and willingly default so that they can avail themselves of the waiver and save money. This “borrower moral hazard” was documented in working paper by the World Bank on the 2008 waiver, which noted that borrowers in high-bailout districts started defaulting in large numbers after all the non-performing loans in these districts had been written off.[11] Not long ago, announcements of farm loan waivers in 2017 by some states led HDFC Bank’s NPA ratio to rise to 1.24% for the June quarter from 1.05% in the previous quarter. More than half of the increase in bad loans was from its agriculture portfolio.[12]Finally, loan waivers worsen the fiscal positions of the state and leave less money for investments in infrastructure like roads, electricity and irrigation systems which could help farmers more in the long-run. According to a recent article published in December 2018 by the Hindustan Times, the newly formed Congress governments in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh may not have adequate fiscal space or funds left to implement other poll promises in the current financial year after announcing farm loan waivers.[13] Pressure to provide loan waivers is mounting in other states as well – In Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik criticized the opposition political parties who demanded a waiver, saying that it would make the State Government bankrupt.[14]To conclude, the farm loan waiver looks like a negative-sum game for everyone involved and does little to meaningfully improve the lives of farmers – why should anyone (except the leaders scoring brownie points during the elections) be happy about it?Footnotes[1] The economic effects of India’s farm loan bailout: business as usual?[2] India’s Agricultural Debt Waiver Scheme, 2008[3] https://www.nabard.org/auth/writereaddata/tender/1608180417NABARD-Repo-16_Web_P.pdf [4] Page on thehindubusinessline.com[5] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/cursor/farmers-need-remunerative-prices-not-debt-waiver-to-end-rural-distress/ [6] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.378.8225&rep=rep1&type=pdf [7] Finance to 5 Lakh Joint Farming Groups of “Bhoomi Heen Kisan” through Nabard in the Current Financial Year[8] https://www.indiaagronet.com/indiaagronet/agri_economics/CONTENTS/Land%20Tenure.htm [9] https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/Oh-What-a-lovely-waiver/article15181680.ece [10] http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/187194/14/14_chapter%208.pdf [11] The economic effects of India’s farm loan bailout: business as usual?[12] https://www.livemint.com/Money/8oTRtiFqkk1pMdHhnZ6wNI/HDFC-Banks-impeccable-asset-quality-gets-a-farm-loan-waiver.html [13] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/after-waivers-fund-crunch-for-3-states/story-GdRlDNbVxo6aAVLPkFMHzO.html [14] http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/2018/dec/22/loan-waiver-will-make-state-bankrupt-cm-1915059.html