Vivek's Commentary

The main aim behind horizontal devolution is to equalize the provisions for public goods and services in states. Finance Commission of India aims to fill the vertical fiscal gap (i.e. matching the revenue and expenditure of different government level, to achieve the horizontal equity (by allocating the higher share to poorest states), to equalize the fiscal capacities of state i.e. rervenue equalization, to equalize expenditure by providing the cost differentials for public services and to create the incentive for states to mobilize own revenue and spend it efficiently.   Criteria and Weights in Previous Finance Commissions  Criteria and Weights in provided by XVth Finance Commissions The recent finance commission includes the criteria called demographic performance as 2011 population data is used instead of 1971. Therefore the states who successfully reduced the population raised the concern and therefore criteria for demographic performance (criterion for total fertilit...

North India has given popular alliances. This Bihar election is also important as far as alliances are concerned. Mahagathbandhan is another such effort. What goes wrong for Mahagathbandhan, What goes wrong for Congress, Why exits polls were incorrect is being discussed everywhere. Apart from these highlighted part (i.e. caste equations, economic factors, etc), we will discuss the statistics, we will discuss some interesting points based on statistics. We will compare these statistics with previous elections. Lastly, we will discuss whether these alliances are helpful for fair representation, how Congress+ alliances can do better in the future.  In the previous election, left parties formed their own alliance. This time, left parties were part of the Mahagathabandhan (RJD+Congress+Left Parties). As far as the vote share is concerned, the vote share of parties forming Mahagathabandhan is increased. The vote share of Congress is also increased from 6.75% to 9.48%. The vote share...