Why Tamil Nadu and Kerala fare poorly in India’s index of state finances – but Odisha does well
· Scroll
On the afternoon of May 4, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari stood in Kolkata to claim his victory. His party had won West Bengal in a landslide. Adhikari described this as a triumph of Hindutva.
Visit biznow.biz for more information.
Five states and territories were counting votes that day – West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu among them, all classified by a government index as “fiscally” failing. Assam, the fourth, governed by the BJP, is not.
The Fiscal Health Index is published by NITI Aayog – the government’s principal policy body – in January 2025 and updated in March 2026. It grades 18 major states on fiscal discipline and classifies them into four tiers: achiever, front runner, performer and, at the bottom, aspirational.
West Bengal is aspirational. Kerala is aspirational in both editions. Tamil Nadu has been declining, with the index’s 2026 executive summary describing the state as having “slipped further to the Aspirational group” – even though the rankings table in the same document contradicts that claim.
In March, an editorial in the Economic and Political Weekly, India’s principal social science journal, noted that the states ranked lowest are disproportionately those not governed by the BJP.
Odisha ranks first. The state was governed by the Biju Janata Dal from 2000-2024, and now has a BJP government.
The fiscal...