The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is delighted to invite you to a seminar titled “Fiscal Federalism and Healthcare in India” on Friday, December 20, 2024 from 3:30-5:00 PM (IST).

The seminar will feature a presentation by Janak Raj, Senior Fellow, CSEP. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with Sudipto Mundle, Chairman, Board of Centre for Development Studies, India; Amarjeet Sinha, Senior Fellow, CSEP; and R. Kavita Rao, Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP).

The seminar will be held at the CSEP Auditorium, 6, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021. Please note that this is an in-person event only. If you are in Delhi on the day, please join us for the seminar. The event will be available on the CSEP website and YouTube channel upon completion.

Register here to attend

About the event

States depend on their own revenue as well as transfers from the Union government for their health spending. There is thus an intricate interplay between fiscal transfers and health spending by Indian states. Health has been a low priority in state budgets. National Health Mission (NHM), a flagship scheme of healthcare of the union government, helped reverse the declining trend in health spending by States. However, states feel constrained by the Union government taking the lead in designing health schemes and setting priorities, with their role being reduced to mere delivery and implementation bodies. They also face uncertainty in fund flows, and there are no clearly defined platforms for communication. States address these constraints by exercising flexibility within the broader NHM framework, relying on their own funds using different platforms for communication. This underlines the need for nuanced policy changes.

Discussants

Sudipto Mundle

Sudipto Mundle is Chairman of the Board of Centre for Development Studies, India, and serves on the boards of several other organisations. He is also Visiting Faculty at the Indian School of Public Policy, New Delhi, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. Formerly he was an Emeritus Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). He was also a member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, India, the erstwhile Monetary Policy Advisory Committee of the Reserve Bank of India and the National Statistical Commission, where he also acted as Chairman.

He spent much of his career until 2008 at the Asian Development Bank, Manila, where he held several positions including that of a Director in the Strategy and Policy Department as his final assignment. In his earlier career in India, he served in a number of academic institutions, including the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum; and NIPFP, New Delhi, where he was the Reserve Bank Chair Professor. He was an Economic Adviser in India’s Ministry of Finance from 1986 to 1989.

Sudipto Mundle graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 1969 and has a PhD in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University, USA; a Joan Robinson Memorial Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge University, UK; and has also had visiting assignments at the Institute of Social Studies at The Hague and the Japan Foundation, Tokyo.

His current research interests include development economics, fiscal and monetary policy, macroeconomic modelling, forecasting and governance. He has published several books and papers in professional journals. He is also a regular columnist for the financial newspaper Mint and a life member of the Indian Econometric Society.

Amarjeet Sinha

Amarjeet Sinha has a life-time commitment to work for transforming lives and livelihoods of the deprived households through human well-being. He is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). He was earlier posted as Advisor to the Prime Minister till July 31, 2021, looking after the social sector and rural initiatives. An Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officer of the Bihar Cadre of the 1983 batch, he retired in December 2019 as Secretary, Department of Rural Development, Government of India. He has 40 years of experience in Government, largely in the rural and social sector. He has had the unique distinction of having played a major role in designing the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (India’s main programme for universal education), the National Rural Health Mission, in bringing about governance reforms in programmes for rural areas covering livelihoods, employment, housing, social security, skills, urban development, and road construction. He also coordinated successfully the work of Gram Swaraj Abhiyan in 2018 to reach seven pro-poor public welfare interventions (LPG, electricity, Bank Account, life and accident insurance, LED Bulbs, and Immunization) to 63,974 large villages with over 50% vulnerable social group population. Multi-Dimensional Poverty and its Reduction, Public Policy and Public Management are areas of his work. He also leads the work on a Public Report on Secondary Education (PROSE) in education for improving learning outcomes, with the Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

R. Kavita Rao

Kavita Rao is Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi and holds RBI Chair Professorship at the Institute.  Prior to being the director, she was a Professor at NIPFP, leading work on tax policy and assessment of its impact.

Her areas of research interest include role of State in developing countries, taxpayers’ perceptions regarding tax compliance and, and tax policy design in national & sub-national jurisdiction.

Dr Rao holds a PhD in Economics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta; Masters in Economics from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.

Presenter & Moderator

Janak Raj

Janak Raj is a Senior Fellow and leads the macroeconomic segment in the Growth, Finance and Development vertical at CSEP. He also works specifically on inter-linkages between economic growth and human development, fiscal federalism in the health sector, climate finance and multilateral development banks (MDBs) reforms. He is currently also a member of the JM Financial Centre for Financial Research of IIM Udaipur. He has more than four decades of work experience, including in the Reserve Bank of India, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Ministry of Finance (Department of Financial Services). Janak Raj served as an Executive Director in the Reserve Bank of India and as a member of its statutory Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). He also served as Principal Adviser of Monetary Policy Department and International Department of the RBI and headed its Department of Economic Policy and Research. At the IMF Washington DC, he was Senior Advisor to the Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka. He served as an RBI nominee director on the Governing Board of the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and as a Senior Consultant in the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance. He holds a PhD in Economics from IIT Bombay.

Welcome Address

Laveesh Bhandari

Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP.  Dr Bhandari has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic, and social reforms in India, economic geography, and financial inclusion. He received his PhD in economics from Boston University for which he was awarded the Best Thesis in International Economics. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. Apart from applied economics research, Dr Bhandari has built, seeded, and exited from three companies in the research, analytics, and digital domains, including Indicus Analytics, a leading economic research firm. Currently, he is conducting research on issues of inclusion, India’s energy transition, and how it will impact the government as well as the economy.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.