The 15th Finance Commission (FC) has brought back performance-linked incentives, using the tool to push population control and tax collection efforts among states, in its report for 2020-21.
Armed with data from the 2011 census, the N K Singh-led FC has put its focus on demography management. This comes after all FCs since the sixth one (1974-79) have been mandated to use the 1971 census data to recommend their awards.
But in 2019, southern states complained of having to bankroll their relatively underdeveloped counterparts in the north. Now, the FC has mandated a new performance-based criterion that rewards states with lower