Closed roundtable on devolution arithmetic, Chennai

Fourteen participants — officials, economists, two journalists writing in their own capacity, and one person who disagreed with everything — met in Chennai on 6 August to work through the arithmetic of fiscal devolution as it bears on the retained-income series.

No press, no photography, Chatham House. The note of what was discussed, with nothing attributed, is published with the series.

One argument from the room — that net Union outflow should be presented alongside gross devolution, not instead of it — is adopted in the next release of the retained-income series. The change log will say so.