Ways and means advances (WMAs) are short-term advances the central bank gives to help states tide over temporary mismatches in their cash flow.
The amount that the states have been given permission to raise through open market borrowings is a little more than Rs 3.2 trillion.
From why analysing state Budgets can be a challenging exercise to how the success of fact-checkers lies in the failure of journalism, here's a selection of Business Standard Opinion pieces for the day
More attention needs to be focused on state Budgets
The government has allocated around Rs 9,000 crore for social security pensions
The own tax revenues of states have risen only marginally from 7% of GSDP in 2011-12 to 7.1% in 2018-19