RS Nilakantan’s “South vs North”

When one spends (wastes?) a lot of time on Twitter, one generally ends up looking forward to the tweets of specific handles for the freshness they bring in. Nilakantan RS has been one such handle. So when he had a book out, I had to pick it up.

Contrary to what the title (South vs North) hints at, in my opinion, the work is a critique of the present fiscal arrangement between the Center and the States. In 2017, Niakantan had a written a widely-circulated piece on the problems with the NEET Entrance examination.

This book is a deep dive into the issues raised in the above article. I personally learnt bits and pieces about:

• The role of sub-nationalism in Indian polity
• Fertility rates acting as an invisible barrier to per-capita GDP growth
• The different trajectories followed by the states of India thereby having differing priorities
• The absurdness of national flagship programmes that are tailor made for ‘set’ objectives
• The ineffectiveness of the Finance Commission in providing a just distribution of taxes that are, to begin with, collected in a skewed manner

The book has left a deep impression and has coloured my perception of centrally driven programmes and of fiscal allocations controlled by the Center.

PS: I was looking forward to meeting Nilakantan in Kozhikode during the recent Lit Fest but couldn’t make it to his sessions.