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No nation can progress unless small shopkeepers and traders are protected and given ease of doing business, Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday. Kejriwal made the remarks while addressing the maiden meeting of the Punjab State Traders Commission in Mohali, where he was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. The former Delhi chief minister said that through the commission, local markets will be upgraded, and long-pending small issues of shopkeepers will be resolved. He said the purpose of the commission is to make the tax system simpler, more transparent, and trader-friendly. “Till now, in our country, traders and businessmen have been viewed with a very negative mindset. No matter which government or which party ruled, everyone treated traders as thieves,” Kejriwal said. “I pray that one day our government is formed at the Centre and we free you from GST. There is a kind of tax terrorism going on,” he said. Kejriwal termed the traders also a victim of politicians, who, he said, only remember them during elections and then, once in power, to extort money till the next election. “I come from a trading family. I understand the pain and suffering of a trader. You may remember how, as children, we used to go to the village during summer holidays. My uncle there had a grocery shop at the bus stand. During summer vacations, many times I would manage the entire shop alone for days. I understand the pain of a shopkeeper,” he said. The AAP leader said the governments always talk about big investments everywhere. “But no one ever paid attention to the small shopkeeper running a grocery store, a clothing shop, a bread shop, a tile shop, or shops in small markets.” Attacking the rival parties in Punjab, he said that after their run was over, neither the Akali Dal nor the Congress would have dared to go among the public and seek honest feedback. “After four years, they would face such abuse that I do not think the Congress government would have had the courage to pass around a microphone in a public gathering and say, speak whatever you want … If it had happened during the Akali Dal government, the microphone would not have returned,” he said.