Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Dr. Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, popularly known as PTR, said that the proportion of grants given by the Centre to the southern state has consistently fallen.
“Tamil Nadu’s share of the population at one time used to be 7.5 percent, of the GDP used to be 7.5 percent, of the taxes devolved by the central government used to be 7.5 percent. Over four-five Finance Commissions, the population has dropped to six percent, the GDP has gone up to 10 percent and the share of taxes has gone down to four percent. This is why we had made the observation that Finance Commissions come and go but our share goes down,” PTR said.
To this, Chairperson NK Singh retorted, “Should states that have done well on population be penalised at the expense of states that have been profligate?”
Meanwhile, former Finance Minister of Punjab, Manpreet Singh Badal attributed the destabilisation of Punjab to Pakistan. “Very few people know that once Dhaka fell and Bangladesh was created, it became the state policy of Pakistan to take revenge… To give a thousand cuts to India, and those thousand cuts will be in Punjab.”
However, Punjab is hopeful, Badal said, reciting a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
The discussion also involved members of the Finance Commission regaling the audience with their travels across India, the people they met, the food they ate and the landscapes they saw.
Lahiri said, “The Finance Commission is not just about punching numbers. It is about interaction with the people.”