Articles by Mala Lalvani

In addition to the three-pillar framework suggested by the Fifteenth Finance Commission, we suggest four constituents, namely the finance commission, NITI Aayog, goods and services tax, and de facto decentralisation, which will help strengthen the “cooperative” element—a key factor for Indian federation to work effectively. Further, the article focuses on finance commissions empowering the local governments and, in particular, assesses the Fifteenth Finance Commission’s thrust to empower the local bodies.

The constituency-level electoral data of 10 parliamentary elections in India, from 1980 to 2014, is used to explore the factors that determine the outcome of parliamentary elections in India. The authors have employed logistic regressions to estimate a vote function with political variables, such as incumbency, political alignment, and political party affiliation, as determinants. That incumbency reduces the chances of winning in close elections, and/or that incumbency disadvantage has been strong in the Hindi belt since the elections of 1998, especially in the states with lower real per capita income, higher share of rural population and low literacy rates are among the various interesting findings that emerge.

The revenue side of the budget is scrutinised to understand if the government is being realistic about revenue generation in 2017–18. Clearly, there is over-optimism, given that economic growth will be slow. Too much is expected from voluntary disclosure and penalties, while incentives are not in place. It would make sense to allow some slippage in the deficit targets in order to revive the economy. In addition, the increasing problem of cesses is discussed with reference to the Krishi Kalyan Cess to assess whether cesses serve the purpose for which they are introduced.

The first full-year budget of the National Democratic Alliance government announced a sharp focus on investment, growth and social security. In addition, Budget 2015-16 claims to have given a boost to cooperative federalism. The budget indeed makes numerous impressive-sounding announcements, but stumbles in the details. This article focuses on the attention-grabbing push for investments and finds that the target of Rs 70,000 crore investment may be over-ambitious. As far as devolution of funds to states is concerned, the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission have been diluted and the states may find themselves short-changed.

With major issues confronting the fertiliser and petroleum sector being left untouched, the small reduction in subsidy numbers in Budget 2012-13 is mere tokenism and lacks credibility. However, there seems to be some thinking in favour of direct cash transfers as a substitute for the existing structure of subsidies. It is true that this alternative has its limitations. Just the fact that an alternative is being thought about in the form of pilot studies for kerosene and some initiative is being taken in the fertiliser sector is the high point of Budget 2012-13.