₹15,26,255 croresrc of central taxes is devolved to 28 states in 2026-27 — a first charge on the divisible pool, and not part of the ₹53,47,315 crore the Union then spends.
The geometry here is the Survey of India’s own Administrative Boundary Database, converted and checked on every build. It is not from Natural Earth, geoBoundaries or a GitHub repository — those carry international boundaries, which depict Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh differently from the Government of India. Provenance, including the checksum of the source archive, is in sources.
Shaded by devolution per person — darker means more central tax per resident. Per 2011-Census person, 2026-27. Boundaries as published by the Survey of India; areas the Survey marks as disputed between states are drawn in grey and carry no figure, because assigning them to one side would be taking a position this site has no business taking.
A map sizes states by land, and land is not people — Rajasthan looks vast and Kerala small, when Kerala has more residents. For per-capita money the population cartogram above is the more honest picture; both are here so you can see the difference the encoding makes.
A coloured map of India would size states by land, and land is not people. Here each tile’s area is its population, so the states where most Indians actually live are the ones you see. Switch the metric to see devolution, debt or the fiscal deficit on the same tiles.
Tile area is population; shade is devolution per person — darker means more central tax per resident. Per 2011-Census person, 2026-27. Grid positions are schematic, not coordinates — this is not a map, deliberately.
This gap is not an accident or an oversight — it is the design. The Commission weights its formula deliberately towards states with lower income per person, so that public services do not depend entirely on where you happen to be born.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Population (2011) | 17.5% |
| Demographic Performance | 10% |
| Area | 10% |
| Forest | 10% |
| Per Capita GSDP Distance | 42.5% |
| Contribution to GDP | 10% |
| Total | 100% |
Per Capita GSDP Distance carries the largest weight at 42.5%: the further a state’s income per person sits below the richest state, the more it receives. The 16th Commission also added a new Contribution to GDP criterion at 10%, which pulls in the other direction.
Health and education are largely State subjects. Quote the Union figure on its own and you understate what governments actually spend by roughly ten times. Switch the scope and watch the number move.
Union social services expenditure fell from 1.2% of GDP in 2011-12 to 0.8% in 2023-24. Health peaked at 0.3% in 2021-22 during COVID and came back down to 0.1%.
This is Union spending only. Switch to Combined — it is 10.0× larger.
Union education expenditure, 2023-24.
This is Union spending only. Switch to Combined — it is 8.3× larger.
Shares of GDP are for 2023-24, from the Sixteenth Finance Commission’s report — both sides from the same document and the same year, so they are actually comparable. Rupee figures apply those shares to the 2026-27 implied nominal GDP and the 2026 population, which is an approximation across three years.
| State | Share | ₹ crore | Per person / year | Debt % of GSDP | Fiscal deficit % | Population (2011) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arunachal Pradesh | 1.354% | 20,665 | ₹1,49,343 | 50.9% | 4.1% | 13,83,727 |
| Sikkim | 0.335% | 5,113 | ₹83,740 | 32.7% | 5.4% | 6,10,577 |
| Mizoram | 0.564% | 8,608 | ₹78,454 | 37% | 2.1% | 10,97,206 |
| Goa | 0.365% | 5,571 | ₹38,196 | 31.9% | 2.2% | 14,58,545 |
| Nagaland | 0.481% | 7,341 | ₹37,104 | 44.2% | 4.3% | 19,78,502 |
| Manipur | 0.626% | 9,554 | ₹33,455 | 43.5% | 4.3% | 28,55,794 |
| Meghalaya | 0.631% | 9,631 | ₹32,462 | 40.6% | 6% | 29,66,889 |
| Tripura | 0.641% | 9,783 | ₹26,628 | 27.9% | 0.8% | 36,73,917 |
| Himachal Pradesh | 0.914% | 13,950 | ₹20,322 | 42.8% | 5.3% | 68,64,602 |
| Chhattisgarh | 3.304% | 50,427 | ₹19,740 | 24.7% | 5.3% | 2,55,45,198 |
| Uttarakhand | 1.141% | 17,415 | ₹17,266 | 25.5% | 2.5% | 1,00,86,292 |
| Odisha | 4.42% | 67,460 | ₹16,072 | 15.7% | 1.9% | 4,19,74,218 |
| Assam | 3.258% | 49,725 | ₹15,935 | 28.7% | 4.1% | 3,12,05,576 |
| Jharkhand | 3.357% | 51,236 | ₹15,532 | 26.5% | 1.4% | 3,29,88,134 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 7.347% | 1,12,134 | ₹15,440 | 30.7% | 3.4% | 7,26,26,809 |
| Bihar | 9.948% | 1,51,832 | ₹14,585 | 37% | 4.1% | 10,40,99,452 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 17.619% | 2,68,911 | ₹13,458 | 29.7% | 3.2% | 19,98,12,341 |
| Rajasthan | 5.926% | 90,446 | ₹13,194 | 37.9% | 4.4% | 6,85,48,437 |
| Andhra Pradesh | 4.217% | 64,362 | ₹13,032 | 34.6% | 4.5% | 4,93,86,799 |
| West Bengal | 7.215% | 1,10,119 | ₹12,064 | 38.3% | 3.3% | 9,12,76,115 |
| Punjab | 1.996% | 30,464 | ₹10,981 | 42.9% | 4.4% | 2,77,43,338 |
| Kerala | 2.382% | 36,355 | ₹10,883 | 35.3% | 3% | 3,34,06,061 |
| Karnataka | 4.131% | 63,050 | ₹10,320 | 22.6% | 2.5% | 6,10,95,297 |
| Gujarat | 3.755% | 57,311 | ₹9,482 | 20.6% | 1.2% | 6,04,39,692 |
| Telangana | 2.174% | 33,181 | ₹9,428 | 27.3% | 3.4% | 3,51,93,978 |
| Maharashtra | 6.441% | 98,306 | ₹8,748 | 18% | 2.2% | 11,23,74,333 |
| Tamil Nadu | 4.097% | 62,531 | ₹8,667 | 29.9% | 3.6% | 7,21,47,030 |
| Haryana | 1.361% | 20,772 | ₹8,194 | 30.5% | 2.9% | 2,53,51,462 |
| Total | 100% | 15,26,253 | 1,17,81,90,321 |
Per-person figures divide by the 2011 Census — the same denominator the Commission’s own formula uses, so the arithmetic is consistent by construction. It is also fifteen years old: India has had no census since. Amounts are 15.26 lakh crore split by each state’s inter se share, so they carry a few crore of rounding.