Mamata Banerjee’s outburst against the Government of India and the prime minister over a special financial package for West Bengal is unwarranted. The government of West Bengal does not make any effort to attract industry and improve its finances through higher manufacturing and tax collections. It wants its people to be involved only in agriculture without having their land compulsorily acquired for industry. But it stridently demands a higher share than its due of tax revenue collected by the central government from the entire country through special packages. This is not a safe and sustainable way of running the country. A state getting a higher share of central taxes than what is collected from it should be based on objective criteria, such as poverty, development indices and efforts made by the state for industrialisation and improvement of tax collection, and not on political posturing and threats.
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