ABOUT THE TALK
Income inequality among Indian states ranks among the highest in the world, comparable to large federations such as the United States, China, and Brazil. Notwithstanding ideological contestation over the scale of redistribution, there has been a net transfer from richer to poorer states. Yet, measured as per-capita transfer relative to per-capita income, these transfers remain inadequate to address deepening regional inequality. In this context, the paper examines three questions: How true are the claims that southern and western states are being “penalized” in the current framework of fiscal transfers, and has uneven population growth made these states victims of their own developmental success? If so, what drives these purported ‘discriminations’ in tax sharing, and how do fiscal transfers work in India? Finally, the paper investigates why traditional economic convergence has failed in India and its distributional implications.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kalaiyarasan A is an Associate Professor of Development Studies at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) and a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. He was previously with the Planning Commission (NITI Aayog) of India, Institute of Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), Delhi. He was also a Visiting Assistant Professor and Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs (WIIPA), Brown University, a research affiliate at the South Asia Institute, Harvard University, and Visiting Fellow at IIT-Bombay. His works among others include The Dravidian Model: Interpreting Political Economy of Tamil Nadu, which he co-authored, was published by the Cambridge University Press. His research focuses on the political economy of development, regional political economies, socio-economic and ecological inequality and energy transitions in the Global South.

Registration Link