After years of neglecting the police force, some of the larger Indian states have begun to spend relatively more on the services. The growth rate of spending now matches the money spent on both social services and on economic services during the past four years.
This could take some pressure off the Centre. In the last ten years, the fastest growing element of India's government expenditure was that on central armed police forces, as the states were under spending on them.
Yet weaknesses remain. Most of the recent rise in the spending by the states are on salary and, to