The revenue question: when India's tax kitty booms but Tamil Nadu's shrinks, the government must answer
September's GST data is unambiguous: India collected 14.7 per cent more, Tamil Nadu collected 5 per cent less. A government that claims administrative competence cannot shrug off a shrinking tax kitty in a booming economy.
Numbers are stubborn things. They do not do roadshows, they do not trend on social media, and they cannot be silenced by a stage-managed rally. September's GST data is one such stubborn thing — and it asks an uncomfortable question of the TVK government in Tamil Nadu.
India's gross GST collections rose 14.7 per cent in September to ₹2.04 lakh crore — the third straight month above the ₹2 lakh-crore mark. Tamil Nadu's domestic collections fell 5 per cent to ₹10,188 crore. Every other large state grew: Maharashtra by 15 per cent, Karnataka by 16, Gujarat by 17, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana by 18. Over the April–September half, Tamil Nadu is down 3.2 per cent — one of the few big states in contraction.
This is not a statistical blip. The Hindu BusinessLine had already reported that Tamil Nadu's SGST collections were in negative territory in the first quarter of this fiscal year. A pattern is forming, and patterns demand explanations.
The government's own narrative makes the numbers stranger. Commercial Taxes Minister Logesh Tamilselvan has credited data-analytics measures — including a partnership with IIT-Hyderabad — for revenue augmentation, with ₹6,220 crore said to have been realised since December 2023. If the analytics are so sharp, why is the domestic collection line pointing down while the rest of India points up?
Revenue is not an abstract accounting entry. In a state that runs free bus travel for women, school breakfast schemes and a vast public-distribution apparatus, every crore of tax revenue foregone is a crore that does not reach a classroom, a primary health centre or a ration shop. A government that promises welfare on a grand scale and then watches its revenue base erode is writing cheques its exchequer cannot honour.
The standard deflections are already rehearsed: that the post-settlement SGST figure grew 17 per cent; that the Centre's import-linked component distorts the national picture. Both have some truth. Neither answers the core question — why Tamil Nadu's domestic collections, the part of the revenue the state government is most directly responsible for, keep falling behind its peers.
Competent administration is not measured in roadshows or rhetoric. It is measured in exactly this: whether the state's machinery collects what it is owed, fairly and efficiently, so that the public purse can fund the public good. On that measure, September's numbers are a report card the TVK government cannot afford to ignore.