FINANCE COMMISSION-Indefensible Award

Indefensible Award THE finance minister, S B Chavan, has defended the Ninth Finance Commission's award for 1989-90, saying that norms have been applied by the commission uniformly to all states. But did he care to ask in how many instances the commission has flouted the norms it had set itself and exceeded its brief? That the commission has failed grievously in these respects is borne out particularly by its dispensation with regard to what it has identified as the special problems of the states.