Tipping in India

To tip or not to tip - that is the question.
On our first three trips to India hubby and I tipped very generously. For a half day city tour we were tipping the driver and guide a 100 rupees each. On long driving trips we were tipping the driver over a 100 rupees  per day. On our last trip to India we decided that we were not going to tip as half of our moneys went on tipping. If you are on a two-week stay in India and visiting a different place every two days or so, the tipping can eat into your budget. Eventually we did tip, as half way through this trip we were feeling very guilty about not doing so.

Imagine the guilt at not having tipped the guides and drivers on the first half of our journey ... especially the guide who drove with us to Rishikesh from Haridwar (his home-town) to accompany us to the ganga-arthi, and who had to drive back home by motorbike, and the guide who took us to a temple for an improptu lunch, or the guide who took me to the first-class toilet at the train station and who painstakingly carried our bags from the train and up the stairs to our hotel in Shimla, and another who carried our bags to the car on our return journey from Shimla, as well as the driver who took the bus from Shimla to drive us from Chandigarh to Delhi. Oh, my heart bleeds when I think about this. On the other hand we should not have tipped the driver who rushed us on our tour of Mumbai. You might be thinking as travellers to India especially, we ought to be tipping, as the guides and drivers do not get paid well. You are quite right.

So this begs the question- how much do we tip! At restaurants it is convenient if the bill includes the compulsory government tax as well as the service charge (tip). Initially we assumed that the government tax was the service tax. At some of the restaurants that we ate, we were charged a 17% government tax, at others we were charged a government tax, a service tax and a service charge. At a restaurant in Delhi we paid by card, and the bill did not have the word "gratuity" included in it, as we do in SA restaurants. So we did not know where to add the tip. After we paid our bill, one of the waiters rudely placed the the black wallet-type cover that  normally accompanies the bill on our table. We enclosed the tip in the cover and left. It is not that we did not want to tip but we were  not sure what procedure to follow. Hopefully these two websites may help with the tipping.
http://indiasomeday.com/tipping-in-india.aspx 
https://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/charges-taxes-restaurants-121637590.html