The state of states

India's fiscal challenge can get worse if states spend more even with lower revenue growth

The Union government’s finances are routinely analysed and critically appraised, when its revenue and expenditure data are released by the Controller General of Accounts at the end of every month. These are unaudited and provisional numbers, but they do provide a broad idea about the state of the Centre’s finances. 

But little analysis of the state governments’ finances takes place during the year. This is unfortunate. A reason could be that there is no centralised agency that compiles the data on finances of all the 30 states and makes them available on a monthly basis. The Reserve Bank of India does