Absurd situation

Imagine a situation where there are 30 students in a class, a mix of good, average and poor students, who gets marks ranging from 98 to 28. How would the students and the parents react if the School takes a decision to total all the marks of the students and distribute it amongst the students equally or in another scenario where more marks are given to weaker students with a purpose to 'encourage' and 'uplift' them!

Or let us think of another scenario where you are working in an office. You work hard and are the most productive employee. But at the end of the year the Management decides to treat the department as a whole and gives bonus equally to all or opts to give more bonus to the non performing employee at your expense in order to give him an incentive to perform better!

Absurd isn't it?

That is precisely happening in Plan allocation in India. There are states which are prosperous and this prosperity is converted to revenue by way of higher Tax collections, most of which are Central Tax and goes to the Central Government. Some of the good states are Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab. And then there are some rogue States who has year after year showed absolute lack of development, prosperity and growth. Erstwhile they were called the BIMARU States - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Add to them the new States like Chattisgarh, Jharkand, Orissa, Kashmir. The contribution of these States to the Central Exchequer is considerably less considering their potential.

And what does the Central Government through Planning Commission do? Instead of giving more Central Plan allocation to the high performing states (remember they are the bigger contributors to the Central Kitty and Planning Fund allocation is a redistribution of the tax collected from States), these States are given proportionately less allocation and worse, the offender States are given more allocation. Is there any justification for it?

Similar is the strange case of Kerala and now Tamil Nadu. These two States have done extremely well on the population front. The population growth rate is almost equal to Zero and is expected to go below the replacement rage. This has been achieved through higher education levels and sustained effort by the Government and the social workers over a few decades. Against this, the above said BIMARU states have shown scant attention to this critical issue and the population there has been growing at a mind boggling rate. What would you do if you were in the Central Government? You would pat Kerala and TN on the back and see that their interests are protected, won't you? But no. That is not how we Indians work. We give more and more money for the rogue States to spend to 'curb' population which they have not done for ages and have no intention of doing for ages. Also, the talk of the town is that following the delimitation of the Constituencies which is underway now, the next step is to redraw the Parliament Constituencies to give 'Proportionate' representation to people based on the current population levels. This means Kerala will lose some of its 20 MP seats and in fact will have less representation in the Parliament but the BIMARU states will have more seats as the population there is higher. This means Kerala and TN are being punished for curtailing population growth while the undeveloped States are being given a pat in the back.

It is time we started a discussion on the Centre-State relationship in India. The current model of a powerful Centre is a legacy of the British. The argument that Centre is ensuring equitable development of the Country doesn't wash anymore. Centre cannot rob Paul and give it to Peter anymore. What we need is a much stronger States with Centres role limited to National Security, External Affairs, Military and Monetary Policies. This is the way forward to overall growth of the Country