Role of Population in Revenue Sharing in India:Stating the Obvious but Missing the Vital

In their paper: On the Role of Population in Criterion-Based Revenue Sharing in India, published in this issue of JISPE, D. K. Srivastava and P. K. Aggarwal (SA for short, used in plural hereafter) attempt to show deficiencies of the three major schemes of allocation of revenue among states in India. In fact 'show deficiencies' is an understatement. For, right from the introduction to their paper to its conclusion, they have laced their criticism of these schemes with such words and phrases as distortions, unwarranted distortions, unintended distortions, intended distortions, pervert distortions, pervert features or penalisation.