Reprioritisation of public expenditure for human development.

Public expenditure ; Human development

Use of socio-economic criteria for intergovernmental transfers: The case of India.

Intergovernmental fiscal relations

Federalism and fiscal reform in India.

This paper attempts to analyse the experience of incentivising economic reforms at the state level through central transfers to states. It reviews the experiences of the central government introducing incentives for reform directly through various specific purpose transfers as well as the incentive schemes recommended by various Finance Commissions. The incentive schemes directly introduced by the central government include, accelerated irrigation benefit programme, accelerated power development and reform programme, Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, education and health sector reforms. The reforms recommended by the Finance Commissions include incentivising tax reforms and fiscal restructuring and consolidation. The review of the experiences of Indian fiscal federalism shows that the incentivising reforms have neither been an unqualified success nor have they been a total failure. There are interesting lessons to be learnt from the experiences for both designing the incentive schemes and implementing them. The paper summarises the lessons of experience. While incorporating these in designing and implementing incentive schemes can be useful in the short and medium term, what matters in the long run is the political incentive for reforms.

The fabrication and characterization of stable core-shell superparamagnetic nanocomposites for potential application in drug delivery

Two systems of core-shell superparamagnetic nanoparticles in the size range 45 to 80 nm have been fabricated by the coating of bare magnetite particles with either mesoporous silica or liposomes and the loading/release of the anti-cancer drug Mitomycin C (MMC) from their surfaces has been investigated. The magnetic cores of size ~ 10 nm were produced by a co-precipitation method in aqueous solution, with the silica coating containing an unstructured network of pores of size around 6 nm carried out using a surfactant-templating approach and the liposome coating achieved by an evaporation-immersion technique of the particles in a lipid solution. Stability measurements using a scanning column magnetometry technique indicated that the lipid-coating of the particles halts the sedimentation otherwise apparent in < 1 hour for the bare magnetite to produce an ultra-stable system and thereby overcome one of the main barriers to potential in-vivo applications. Whilst an increase in stability was also observed in the silica-coated system, it was still unstable over a few hours and will require further investigation. Magnetization curves of the coated systems were indicative of superparamagnetic behavior whilst the in vitro loading and release of MMC resulted in two distinctly different outcomes for the two systems: (i) the silica-coated particles saturated in < 4 hours to a loading of around 7 µg/mg of material, releasing about 6 % at a near constant rate over 48 hours whilst (ii) the lipid-coated particles saturated to around only 4 µg/mg over the same time period but with a subsequent rapid release rate over the first 3 hours to 27 % then rising near-linearly to a value of about 45 % at the 48 hour mark. This gives scope for systems’ to be tuned to the appropriate rate and load delivery as required by clinical need with further investigations underway

Issues before the thirteenth finance commission.

The Thirteenth Finance Commission faces challenging times. Despite improvement, the fiscal situation continues to be a matter of concern when off budget liabilities and other fiscal risks are considered. In the changing situation of increasing oil prices on the one hand and surge in capital flows on the other, calibrating the transfer system in tune with counter-cyclical fiscal policy stance is a formidable challenge. The paper argues that irrespective of the wording of the Terms of Reference (ToR), the Commission would do well to focus on its primary task of recommending transfers to serve the objective of equity and incentives. While it is required to take into account a number of considerations, the focus should be on the transfer system. As an impartial body, the Commission should make a fair assessment of the union as well as state governments, ignoring the asymmetries in the wording of the ToR. As regards the transfer system itself is concerned, the paper argues that although it may be difficult to make drastic changes in the relative shares of the states, the Commission should give up the gap filling approach. Instead, after recommending the tax devolution, the Commission should recommend grants to fully equalise expenditures on elementary education and basic healthcare. It is also possible to incentivise the transfer system for even those states that have a better record of providing education and healthcare to improve quality of these services. If necessary, the tax devolution percentage can be appropriately adjusted to ensure equalisation of social services. The paper is a revised and edited version of one that was presented in the seminar on Issues before the Thirteenth Finance Commission held at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) on May 23-24, 2008.