IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/npf/wpaper/17-219.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Finance in India in the Context of India's Development

Author

Listed:
  • Rao, M. Govinda

    (National Institute of Public Finance and Policy)

Abstract

The paper analyses important issues in Indian public finance in the context of the In-dia's economic development. Given the predominance of working population and with chil-dren in the age group 0-14 constituting over 40 per cent of the population, government fi-nance has a critical role not only in protecting life and property but also in creating physical infrastructure to expand economic activities to generate employment opportunities and in providing social infrastructure to empower them to get productively employed. The analysis public spending, however, shows that spending on education and healthcare is woefully in-adequate and expenditures on interest payments, subsidies and transfers have crowded out spending on physical and social infrastructures. The reasons for the above phenomenon have to be found in the low levels of taxation apart from lopsided priorities. Based on the 98 country average behaviour, the paper shows that the tax-GDP ratio in the country is lower by 2-3 percentage points for its level of per capita GDP. The reasons for the low tax ratio have to be found in the exemption to agricultural incomes, widespread tax preferences due to multiple objectives loaded into tax policy, tax abuse by multinationals and poor tax administration. The low tax collections are also the reasons for the persistence of large deficits and debt. Despite passing the FRBM Act to follow the rule based fiscal policy, containing the gov-ernment deficits and debt has continued to be a major challenge and the targets are diluted, new concepts created and repeatedly postponed. The paper argues that there is a strong case for creating a fiscal council by amending the FRBM Act and it is should be appointed by the Parliament and should be reporting to it as recommended by the Fourteenth Finance Com-mission. This is in contrast to the Fiscal Review Committee's recommendation according to which the Fiscal council should be appointed by the Finance Ministry and should report to it.

Suggested Citation

  • Rao, M. Govinda, 2017. "Public Finance in India in the Context of India's Development," Working Papers 17/219, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:npf:wpaper:17/219
    Note: Working Paper 219, 2017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nipfp.org.in/media/medialibrary/2017/12/WP_2017_219.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. Govinda Rao & Sudhanshu Kumar, 2018. "Envisioning tax policy for accelerated development in India," Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 25(1), pages 85-107, June.
    2. M. Govinda Rao & R. Kavita Rao, 2005. "Trends and Issues in Tax Policy and Reform in India," India Policy Forum, Global Economy and Development Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 2(1), pages 55-122.
    3. Banerjee, Shesadri & Bhattacharya, Rudrani, 2017. "Micro-level Price Setting Behaviour in India: Evidence from Group and Sub-Group Level CPI-IW Data," Working Papers 17/217, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    4. Buiter, Willem & Patel, Urjit R., 2006. "India's Public Finances: Excessive Budget Deficits, a Government-Abused Financial System and Fiscal Rules," CEPR Discussion Papers 5502, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Panagariya, Arvind & Chakraborty, Pinaki & Rao, M. Govinda, 2014. "State Level Reforms, Growth, and Development in Indian States," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199367863.
    6. Buiter Willem H. & Urjit R. Patel, 2006. "Excessive Budget Deficits, a Government-Abused Financial System, and Fiscal Rules," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 2(1), pages 1-54.
    7. Rao, M. Govinda, 2017. "The Effect of Intergovernmental Transfers on Public Services in India," Working Papers 17/218, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    8. Rao, M. Govinda & Kumar, Sudhanshu, 2017. "Envisioning Tax Policy for Accelerated Development in India," Working Papers 17/190, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    9. Richard M Bird & Eric M Zolt, 2008. "Tax Policy in Emerging Countries," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 26(1), pages 73-86, February.
    10. Hazarika, Bhabesh, 2017. "Decomposition of Gender Income Gap in Rural Informal Micro-enterprises: An Unconditional Quantile Approach in the Handloom Industry," Working Papers 17/216, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Radhika Pandey & Ila Patnaik & Ajay Shah, 2019. "Business Cycle Measurement in India," Societies and Political Orders in Transition, in: Sergey Smirnov & Ataman Ozyildirim & Paulo Picchetti (ed.), Business Cycles in BRICS, pages 121-152, Springer.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. M. Govinda Rao, 2018. "Public finance in India: some reflections," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 45(2), pages 113-127, June.
    2. Bose, Sukanya & Noopur, A. & Nayudu, Sri Hari, 2022. "Intergovernmental Fiscal transfers and Expenditure on Education in India: State level analysis, 2005 to 2020," Working Papers 22/377, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    3. Shruti SHASTRI & A.K. GIRI & Geetilaxmi MOHAPATRA, 2017. "An empirical assessment of fiscal sustainability for selected South Asian economies," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(1(610), S), pages 163-178, Spring.
    4. Sacchidananda Mukherjee & Shivani Badola, 2021. "Public Financing of Human Development in India: A Review," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 15(1), pages 62-81, April.
    5. Das, Piyali & Ghate, Chetan, 2022. "Debt decomposition and the role of inflation: A security level analysis for India," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    6. Kannan, R & Singh, Bhupal, 2007. "Debt-deficit dynamics in India and macroeconomic effects: A structural approach," MPRA Paper 16480, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2007.
    7. International Monetary Fund, 2009. "India: Selected Issues," IMF Staff Country Reports 2009/186, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Patel, Urjit R. & Bhattacharya, Saugata, 2010. "Infrastructure in India: The economics of transition from public to private provision," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 52-70, March.
    9. Dillip Kumar MUDULI & Nityasundar MANIK, 2020. "Tax structure and economic growth in general category states in India: A panel auto regressive distributed lag approach," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(2(623), S), pages 225-240, Summer.
    10. Shruti SHASTRI & A.K. GIRI & Geetilaxmi MOHAPATRA, 2017. "An empirical assessment of fiscal sustainability for selected South Asian economies," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania - AGER, vol. 0(1(610), S), pages 163-178, Spring.
    11. Rao, M. Govinda, 2017. "The Effect of Intergovernmental Transfers on Public Services in India," Working Papers 17/218, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    12. Krishanu Pradhan, 2018. "Assessment of India’s Fiscal and External Sector Vulnerability: A Balance Sheet Approach," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 12(3), pages 308-332, August.
    13. Mukherjee, Sacchidananda, 2015. "Present State of Goods and Services Tax (GST) Reform in India," Working Papers 15/154, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    14. Anirudh Tagat, 2019. "The Taxman Cometh: Behavioural Approaches to Improving Tax Compliance in India," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 3(1), pages 12-22, March.
    15. Nirvikar Singh, 2007. "The dynamics of reform of India’s federal system," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 8(01), pages 22-31, April.
    16. Emmanuel Ekow Asmah & Francis Kwaw Andoh & Edem Titriku, 2020. "Trade misinvoicing effects on tax revenue in sub‐Saharan Africa: The role of tax holidays and regulatory quality," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 91(4), pages 649-672, December.
    17. Dhongde, Shatakshee, 2017. "Measuring Segregation of the Poor: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 111-123.
    18. Rashmi Shukla, 2021. "Government Expenditure on Drinking Water and Sanitation in Uttar Pradesh, India: An Empirical Analysis of Its Trend and Composition," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 15(3), pages 515-531, December.
    19. Rakesh Mohan, 2008. "The Role of Fiscal and Monetary Policies in Sustaining Growth with Stability in India," Working Papers id:1778, eSocialSciences.
    20. Scott Beaulier & Joshua Hall & Ben VanMetre, 2009. "The Articles Of Confederation Show The Need For Direct Taxation? It Just Ain'T So!," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 93-94, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Taxation and subsidies general;

    JEL classification:

    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:npf:wpaper:17/219. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: S.Siva Chidambaram The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask S.Siva Chidambaram to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nipfp.org.in .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.