new delhi in three weeks the 15th finance commission is due to submit its report setting the road map for sharing of financial resources between the centre and states for the next five years in an interview its chairman n k singh discusses the issues with toi excerptshow far are you from finishing your reportthis is the lastmile spurt fortunately so far this has gone smoothly the last lap is always more difficult as we put together all the recommendationsfrom the time you submitted your first report to now the world has changed and so would be the assumptions and framework how have you recalibrated your approachwhen we had given our report for 202021 we believed that the economy was coming out of transitional issues including a global slowdown we had calibrated a model and we had hoped to make a linear projection on growth rates for the fiveyear period 20212026 but that has not been possible in terms of revenue and accompanying tax buoyancy we could not assume a constant figure as a consequence we have sought to recalibrate the permissible expenditure limits making certain assumptions which ensured that there was expenditure management and control and reprioritisation in areas like the revenue deficit grants we have endeavoured to recalibrate our numbers given the shrinkage in fiscal spacewhat are the big things we should watch out forthere are issues such as depleting groundwater level in agriculture and the need for incentivising states or a recognition that agriexport is only a fraction of the potential similarly on power we have sought to address the issue of deeper reforms on the issue of fiscal consolidation there is preponderance of opinion among the members of my economic advisory council that the frbm law including amendments of 2018 may have outlived its utility and we may need to revisit some of the more fundamental assumptions there is an unsettled debate on whether we need cyclically adjusted fiscal deficit targets or have a range instead of a fixed point we have tried to address some of the issues regarding the new fiscal road map we have recognised that it is the inescapable and indivisible obligation of every citizen of the country that the highest priority must be given to defencedoes the pandemic show how the centre and states have been spending inadequately on health and has it been addressed in your reportthere is inadequacy of public health expenditure and it is not unique to the current situation or this government we spend less than 1 of gdp on health many state governments need to reprioritise their public outlay the finance minister has said that the central government also needs to spend more when the allindia services act 1951 was enacted it did talk of creating an indian medical service like the ias and ips this suggestion was there in 1767do you see the finance commission playing a balancing act between the centre and states and if the constitution was being written today is it more