Need to bridge interState disparities, says economist

Multiple gold seizures at capital airport

The Air Customs on Saturday seized three gold capsules weighing 983.43 grams with an estimated market value of ₹63 lakh from a passenger who arrived at the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport on a flight from Abu Dhabi.

The gold capsules were found in compound form concealed in the body of the passenger. The Customs team also seized four gold capsules weighing 1.08 kg and valued at ₹69.39 lakh from a passenger who arrived in another flight from Abu Dhabi. From a passenger who arrived from Bahrain, the Customs seized 26,000 counterfeit cigarette sticks with a value of ₹4.42 lakh.

Eminent economist M.A. Oommen has emphasised on the need to bridge interState disparities and the inequality that exists in the delivery of services like primary health care, primary education and essential commodities for the Indian federal structure to become truly cooperative, inclusive and democratic.

The former chairman of the State Finance Commission also bemoaned the fiscal imbalance that has significantly widened during the last ten years.

He was speaking while delivering the keynote address at a national seminar jointly organised by Kerala Economic Association, Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation and Inter University Centre for Alternative Economics, Kerala University, on ‘Cooperative federalism: Challenges ahead’ here on Saturday.

Prof. Oommen said the country has been witnessing a dialectical tension between forces working on a marketpreserving fiscal federalism strategy with hard budget constraints and those who clamoured for social democratic ideals seeking to deliver the needs of the people.

Deep retreat

Asserting such competition has pushed the parliamentary process to a deep retreat, he pointed out the 16th Lok Sabha (201419) had spent hardly 62 hours for both Demand for Grants and the budget together, while the one in effect apportioned much lesser time. Contrastingly, the second Lok Sabha under Jawaharlal Nehru had spent 711 hours on the discussions on Demand for Grants alone.

Suggesting that there has been a “deliberate” concentration of political power towards the Centre over the years, Prof. Oommen said the union expenditure has considerably fallen below the total expenditures of States. While this was in contrast with the scenario that existed prior to 19992000, a sharp downturn has been seen in union expenditure since 201112. Pointing out that the Union and State Finance panels should ideally complement each other, he advocated a comprehensive review of the federal system to address the existing lacunae.

S. MAHINSHA Candidates for the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency Shashi Tharoor, Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Panniyan Raveendran with General Education Minister V. Sivankutty, lyricist Sreekumaran Thampi and ISRO Chairman S. Somnath during the birthday celebrations of the lyricist in the city on Saturday.