Speaker: Shri. Haseeb Drabu, Former Finance Minister, Jammu and Kashmir
Topic: Fiscal Federalism in a Regulated Open Economy: Towards a New Federal Compact
Chair:
Dr. T. M. Thomas Isaac, Former Finance Minister, Kerala
Welcome :
Prof. C. Veeramani, Director, CDS
Haseeb A Drabu, an alumnus of the Centre for Development Studies, is a professional economist with a diverse skill set and wide-ranging experience. He was the Finance Minister of J&K and a Member of the GST Council. Prior to that he worked as the Economic Advisor for seven years. In an operational role, he has been the Chairman and Chief Executive of a listed bank for five years. He has been involved with national economic policy making at the highest level, including in the Planning Commission, Finance Commission, and the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister. He has been associated with government and corporate policy making in various capacities. He was a member of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on the Long-term Development, Member of the Godbole Committee, Member, Planning Commission’s Working Group on Resources other than Tax Resources for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, Consultant, and Member of the Expert Group on ‘Promotion of Diversity in living, education and workspaces for the minorities” set up by the Government of India. He has also been an opinion maker and commentator as National Editor of India’s premier financial daily, Business Standard. Currently, he sits on the Board of a clutch of Indian corporates and Funds.
Abstract: The basic premise of the lecture is simple: despite the nature of economic regime having changed from state socialism to business liberalism, the framework for governance having been modified from a two to a three-tier structure, institutional landscape of policy making redefined from control to regulate, and the tax regime radically changed by the pooling of indirect tax sovereignty, the framework of fiscal federalism in India has remained completely unchanged. So too has the academic research on it, which has stagnated by continuing to debate the equity versus efficiency of its criteria of distribution. The consequence of this has been an ill-fitting if not dysfunctional federal framework. The lecture confines to outlining some of the changes in fiscal federalism that are required in the new context.