Vol. 02 · Union Budget 2026-27thepublicrupee.comRadical Transparency Edition—
The Public Rupee
A sovereign ledger for a republic of 1.4 billion — tracing every paisa the Government of India collects, prints, and borrows. Drill from the Union Budget down to the road outside your house, until the paper trail runs out.
Source: Budget at a Glance, FY 2026-27 Updated: 01 Feb 2026
Eight trillion rupees separate what the Government of India will earn this year and what it will spend. The gap — called the fiscal deficit — is plugged by borrowing, primarily from Indian banks, insurance companies, and provident funds.
Total Receipts
36.52
LAKH CRORE · excl. borrowings
▲ 7.2% vs RE 2025-26
Total Expenditure
53.47
LAKH CRORE
▲ 7.7% vs RE 2025-26
Fiscal Deficit
16.96
LAKH CRORE · 4.3% of GDP
Borrowings fund the gap
To States
26.21
LAKH CRORE · devolution + schemes
▲ 12.2% · 49% of all outlay
The Rupee Flow · inflows, Treasury, outflows
Percentage of total budget, FY 2026-27 Budget Estimate. Hover any branch for details.
Start your trace. This dashboard lets you follow any rupee. Click By State to see what your state receives. Scheme Tracker to see what was promised vs. actually spent. Trace Your Rupee to see how a real government programme reaches the ground. The Wall for where the paper trail ends.
Of every rupee the Union Government controls, only 76 paise is actually earned. The rest — nearly a quarter — is borrowed.
Detailed breakdown
Hover a row for details
The borrowing line. 24% of the budget is financed by borrowing. The interest on all past borrowing now eats up 20 paise of every rupee spent — more than defence, more than all subsidies combined. India has borrowed every single year since independence.
The three largest line items — transfers to states, interest payments, and central-sector schemes — together consume 59 paise of every rupee. Everything else fights over the remainder.
Detailed breakdown
Hover a row for details
Committed expenditure. Roughly 65% of revenue receipts are already committed before any policy choice is made — salaries, pensions, and interest. The "discretionary" budget is a thin slice of what looks like a vast machine.
What Your State Gets
Tax devolution · BE 2026-27 Based on 16th Finance Commission
The Sixteenth Finance Commission fixed states' share at 41% of the shareable central tax pool — ₹15.26 lakh crore in FY 2026-27. Each state's share is decided by a formula weighing income distance (45%), population (15%), area (15%), demographic performance (12.5%), forest cover (10%), and tax effort (2.5%). Click any state to see the detail.
28 STATES · click a tile · shade = share of divisible pool
LOWHIGHUP: 17.6% · highest
Why Uttar Pradesh gets the largest share. The formula weights income distance most heavily — poorer states get more. UP has both a very large population and a below-average per-capita income, so it receives 17.6% of the pool. Bihar (9.95%), Madhya Pradesh (7.35%), and West Bengal (7.22%) follow. Southern states — which have lower population growth and higher per-capita income — receive less than their contribution to the pool, a recurring political fault line.
Full state-wise table
₹ crore · BE 2026-27
#
State
Share %
Total (₹ Cr)
Rel. scale
Corp. Tax
Income Tax
CGST
Customs
Excise
Scheme Tracker · Promised vs Spent
BE 2025-26 vs RE 2025-26 Latest available data
A budget announcement is a promise. Actual expenditure is the reckoning. The chart below tracks how much of each flagship scheme's allocation actually reached beneficiaries in FY 2025-26 — and reveals a quiet, persistent pattern: announced outlays for some of India's most visible schemes are dramatically underspent.
Scheme
BE 2025-26
RE 2025-26
Utilisation
Status
BE 2026-27
The utilisation gap. Jal Jeevan Mission spent only 25% of its 2025-26 allocation. PMAY-Urban 2.0 spent 8.57%. Swachh Bharat 40%. Contrast this with MGNREGA and PM-KISAN, which run at effectively 100% — because they are demand-driven cash transfers with fewer execution barriers. Capital-heavy schemes underperform; entitlement schemes don't. The gap is where announced ambition meets the limits of delivery capacity at district level.
Trace Your Rupee
A step-by-step tracing Pick any public good
How does your money, collected as income tax or GST, actually reach the road outside your house or the school you send your child to? Pick a scheme and a state to see the end-to-end flow — and where, in practice, things leak.
The real delivery pipeline. Most public spending passes through 5–7 hops before it becomes concrete or wages. Each hop takes time; some take a cut. The Public Financial Management System (PFMS) — built by the Controller General of Accounts since 2009 — is the government's attempt to track every rupee through every hop in real time. It now interfaces with over 650 banks and all 28 state treasuries, and has moved a large share of welfare to Direct Benefit Transfer. It is, genuinely, one of the most ambitious public-finance transparency projects in the world. Its data is the reason sections of this site can exist.
Who Does India Owe Money To?
Public debt of the Central Government Ownership pattern · indicative
India's public debt is overwhelmingly internal — about 95% of what the Union owes is to Indian institutions and Indian savers. This is a structural strength (no foreign-currency crisis vulnerability) and a structural cost (the banking system is captured as a debt-financing utility).
Total Outstanding Liabilities
~180
LAKH CRORE · end-FY25 est.
≈ 57% of GDP
Gross Borrowing FY27
15.68
LAKH CRORE · BE 2026-27
▲ 6% YoY
Interest Payments
13.35
LAKH CRORE · largest single head
▲ 10.2% · compounding
External Debt Share
~5%
OF TOTAL · World Bank, ADB, Japan
Denominated mostly in USD/Yen
The holders of G-Secs · who finances the deficit
Indicative shares · end-FY25
Commercial Banks
37%
₹66L Cr est.
Insurance Cos (LIC+)
25%
₹45L Cr est.
Provident Funds (EPFO)
11%
₹20L Cr est.
Reserve Bank (RBI)
13%
₹23L Cr est.
Mutual Funds
3%
₹5L Cr est.
Foreign Investors (FPIs)
3%
₹5L Cr est.
External · WB/ADB/Bilateral
5%
₹9L Cr est.
Others (co-op banks, individuals)
3%
₹5L Cr est.
Debt-to-GDP trajectory · Central Government
Outstanding liabilities as a percentage of GDP. The stated goal is to bring this below 50% by March 2031.
The home-bias in Indian debt. Indian banks are required by regulation (Statutory Liquidity Ratio, SLR) to hold a minimum proportion of their assets in government securities — currently 18%. This creates a captive buyer for Union debt. Combined with LIC's dominance in insurance and EPFO's dominance in retirement savings, the effect is that the Government of India borrows almost entirely from Indian savers, intermediated by state-influenced institutions. India has never, in its independent history, experienced a sovereign debt crisis. This is why.
The Central Bank's Contribution
RBI surplus transfer · FY 2024-25 Paid May 2025
India does not "print money" to fund its deficit in the way some imagine. The Reserve Bank buys government bonds in the secondary market (open-market operations) and transfers its annual surplus to the Treasury. In FY25, that surplus was a record ₹2.69 lakh crore.
RBI Surplus Transfer FY25
2.69
LAKH CRORE · record high
▲ 27% over FY24 (₹2.11L)
Forex Sold
$371.6
BILLION in FY25 · rupee defence
More than 2× previous year
Rupee Securities
15.6
LAKH CR · RBI holdings, Mar-25
Interest earned on these
Contingent Risk Buffer
7.5%
OF BALANCE SHEET · upper band
Range widened May 2025
RBI Surplus to Government · ten-year trail
The transfer is legally a "surplus," not a dividend (RBI is a statutory body, not a company). It comes from forex operations, interest on rupee securities, and fees from currency-note printing.
How the surplus is earned
FY 2024-25
What counts as "money printing"
Explainer
Currency in circulation has grown from ₹17.97 lakh crore (Mar 2020) to roughly ₹36+ lakh crore (2026). Most of this reflects economic activity, not deficit financing.
Direct monetisation — RBI printing notes to hand the Treasury — was effectively abolished in 1997 and formally ended in 2006 (FRBM Act).
Indirect monetisation happens when RBI buys government securities in secondary markets. This adds reserves to the banking system.
M3 (broad money) has grown ~10–11% annually. The true money-creating force in India is commercial bank credit expansion, not direct central-bank action.
The Jalan formula. How much the RBI sends the government is governed by the Economic Capital Framework (2019). In May 2025 the central board widened the contingent risk buffer range from 5.5–6.5% to 4.5–7.5% of the balance sheet. Every half-percent on that buffer is tens of thousands of crores.
Fifteen Years of Public Finance
FY 2011-12 through FY 2026-27 BE Nominal ₹ lakh crore
The Union Budget has grown from ₹14 lakh crore (2011-12) to ₹53 lakh crore (2026-27 BE) — a roughly 3.8× nominal expansion. Inflation accounts for less than half; the rest is real economic growth and deepening fiscal footprint.
Receipts, Expenditure, and the Fiscal Deficit
All figures in ₹ lakh crore. Shaded region is fiscal deficit (expenditure minus non-borrowing receipts).
Total ExpenditureTotal Receipts (ex-borrowing)Fiscal Deficit
Where the Paper Trail Ends
Categories of expenditure that are not publicly disclosed, aggregated, or auditable in the usual sense
India's public-finance architecture is remarkably transparent by global standards. The entire budget is online, CAG audits are public, every Demand for Grants is debated. But there are known holes in the ledger. This page is about those holes.
6
Known categories of un-tracked or partially-tracked expenditure
These are the specific, legally-defined zones where public tracing of the rupee becomes difficult or impossible. Beyond these, no official record is given.
◉ Sec. Service Expenditure
Secret Service Expenditure
The CAG is explicitly barred from demanding particulars. A certificate from a "competent administrative authority" that the expenditure was incurred under their authority is accepted in lieu of audit. Covers intelligence agencies (IB, R&AW), covert operations, and similar.
AUDITABLE5%
Estimated size: tens of thousands of crores. Exact figure not published.
◉ Classified Defence
Classified Defence Procurement
Procurement of specific strategic systems, nuclear-related capital outlay, and certain R&DO programmes are classified. CAG reports are redacted at draft stage before tabling. Former CAGs have acknowledged removing defence reports from the website at ministry request.
AUDITABLE45%
Within ₹6.81 lakh cr defence outlay · classified share unpublished.
◉ PM-CARES Fund
PM CARES Fund
Constituted March 2020. Government has stated in affidavits that PM CARES is not a government fund and therefore not auditable by CAG. Audited by a private chartered accountant. RTI applications for donor/disbursement details have been declined.
PUBLIC DISCLOSURE15%
Corpus est. ₹10,000+ cr across inflows · disbursements not itemised.
◉ PMNRF
PM National Relief Fund
Established 1948 by Nehru. Operates outside the Consolidated Fund of India. Administered by the PM. Publishes annual totals but not itemised beneficiary lists. Not under CAG audit jurisdiction.
PUBLIC DISCLOSURE25%
Annual disbursements ₹100-300 cr range · granular breakdown unavailable.
◉ Electoral Bonds
Political Funding (historical)
The Electoral Bond Scheme (2018-2024) allowed anonymous corporate donations to political parties. Struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Feb 2024. Flows totalled ₹16,518+ crore. Not a Union expenditure per se — but a parallel unrecorded money channel the state created.
AUDITABLE3%
₹16,518 cr total · donor-recipient map made public only post-SC order.
◉ PPP / Off-budget
Off-Budget & PPP Liabilities
Contingent liabilities through PSU borrowings (FCI, NHAI), extra-budgetary resources, and many PPP concession arrangements. CAG has noted audit jurisdiction over PPPs is contested. These create real future fiscal obligations outside the Budget.
AUDITABLE60%
Extra-budgetary resources rose to ~1.5% of GDP in some years · reform ongoing.
Beyond these six categories, no official record is given. There is, of course, undocumented expenditure below them — cash transactions, unaccounted corruption leakage, unregistered subnational flows — but by definition these are unquantifiable from public sources. The government does not publish what it does not record.
How deep the audit goes
CAG mandate under Art. 148–151
The Comptroller and Auditor General can audit all expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India, the Contingency Fund, and the Public Account. These three funds capture the great majority of Union finance. The bars below trace what is, and is not, within public reach.