Reading it through the dual mandate

Melinda Cooper's Counterrevolution argues that the neoliberal fiscal order runs a double standard: austerity for the social wage, extravagance for asset holders and creditors. A state budget will not split cleanly into the two — because the real extravagance (tax breaks, capital-gains preferences, asset-price support) is exercised upstream by the Union and the RBI, the same authorities that take 63% of Assam's revenue and cap what it may borrow. Assam's budget is the austerity terminal of that system. What it does show is the one place the extravagance pole reaches in: the creditor's claim, paid first and in full.

Assam pays more in interest to bondholders (₹8,534 cr) than it spends running its entire public-health system (₹7,516 cr). Counting repayment, debt service to creditors (₹11,257 cr) is the protected claim; the social wage is the disciplined one. The borrowing that generates that interest is itself capped by statute, while the interest on it is not — discipline for the borrower, an assured return for the rentier.

A reading, not an accounting category. Sector figures: CivicDataLab / openbudgetsindia, Assam BE 2022-23. The larger extravagance (Union tax expenditures, asset supports) is not in any state budget.