Beyond the pandemic: The crisis of revenues

Once the pandemic is over, the states need to garner more own revenues to spend more on meritorious heads such as education, health and infrastructure

The Covid-19 pandemic has cost us dear in not only lives and livelihoods, but also lower revenues and higher expenditure, both for the Union and the states. The ongoing pandemic is not the time to mobilise higher revenues. But I am sure that soon there will be life after the pandemic. So, it is useful to look at the finances of both the Union and the states before the pandemic between 2011-12 and 2017-18.

Even before the pandemic, there was insufficiency of revenues at both the Union and the state levels. For example, in 2017, India’s general government tax revenue —