politypolicy.com · by Tushar Gupta

India, in Infographics

Every Rupee The Centre Spends, And What It Became

Forty years of the Union budget, head by head, each as a share of total spending. In 1986-87 lending to the states was the biggest of the five named heads and interest was fourth. Today interest on debt is first at 25.2% and lending is last at 4.5% — the two have swapped ends of the table. Choose the heads and the years, and the chart redraws.

The Heads — Click To Add Or Remove

Quick Sets

How To Draw Them

The Years

From1986-87 To2025-26

Or Jump To

Selected, Together

100.0%

Change Across The Range

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Largest Selected

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Peak, Combined

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Hover or tap any year to read every selected head for that year and what they come to together. With all six on, the stack is the whole rupee and reaches 100% by construction; with a subset on, it tops out at the subset’s combined share. The vertical axis rescales to whatever is selected and is relabelled each time, so read it before comparing two views.

Download The Graphic Post It Eight Readings On The Debt ↓ How It’s Calculated ↓

The downloadable card carries all six heads as separate panels on one fixed scale. Free to use anywhere with credit to politypolicy.com

Eight Readings On How India Carries Its Debt

Every figure below is computed from the forty years on this page — nothing is imported, and each one is asserted in the build, so a number that stops being true breaks the page rather than quietly publishing.

30.5% → 25.2%

The Peak Was 2000-01, And It Has Not Been Matched Since

At the top of the curve the Centre spent ₹30.5 of every ₹100 on interest. 25 years later it spends ₹25.2 — out of a budget 15.6 times bigger.

15.6× vs 12.9×

Debt Service Grew Slower Than The State

Since 2000-01 total spending multiplied 15.6 times and the interest bill only 12.9. A government that outgrows its own interest bill is a government whose debt is getting easier to carry, not harder.

₹4.19 → ₹1.43

Interest Per Rupee Of Capital Outlay

In 1996-97 the Centre spent ₹4.19 servicing debt for every rupee it put into an asset. Today ₹1.43. The three lowest readings after the opening three years of the series are 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 — the last three fiscal years.

70 paise

Of Capital Outlay For Every Rupee Of Interest

Six of the forty years clear seventy paise. Three of those six are 2023-24, 2024-25, 2025-26. The other three are 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89, when the debt stock was a fraction of today’s.

36× vs 12.9×

Building Outran Borrowing Costs, Three To One

Since 2000-01 capital outlay multiplied 36 times against the interest bill’s 12.9 — 2.8 times as fast. The budget did not merely stop being eaten by interest; the space went into assets.

4.86 pp

The Sharpest Six-Year Consolidation In The Record

The fiscal deficit fell from 9.16% of GDP in 2020-21 to 4.3% in 2026-27. Across 44 years of the deficit series no other six-year stretch comes close — the next best is 3.44 points, 2001-02 to 2007-08.

−6.5 / +7.9 pp

The Biggest Ten-Year Swap In The Series

Between 2014-15 and 2024-25 the rigid half of the budget — interest plus subsidies — fell 6.5 points while capital outlay rose 7.9. No other decade in the forty years moves both that far, in those directions, at once.

+10.1 pp

The Nineties Ran The Other Way

Between 1990-91 and 2000-01 interest’s share of the budget rose 10.1 points — a decade of the debt eating the state. More than half of that has since been given back, which is the measure of what changed.

And Three That Cut The Other Way

The eight above are all claims about share and speed. None of them says the debt is small. These three are the same series read against the case.

The Interest Bill Itself Has Never Been Bigger

₹12.76 lakh crore in 2025-26, a record. Across the full forty years it multiplied 138 times against the budget’s 81. Every reading above is measured from the 2000-01 peak, not from 1986-87 — and that choice matters.

A Third Of The Revenue Budget Still Goes On It

Interest takes 32.4 paise of every rupee of revenue spending, against 22.6 in 1986-87. Measured against the day-to-day budget rather than the whole, the burden is heavier than it was, not lighter.

And It Has Risen Five Years Running

From 19.4% in 2020-21 to 25.2% in 2025-26, up in every one of those years and now level with 2018-19. The fall on this page is a fall from 2000-01, not from last year.

The Maths

Four lines of arithmetic, and the subtraction behind every head.

Share of the budget = the head ÷ total Union government expenditure × 100

Selected, together = the sum of the shares of whichever heads are switched on — all six sum to 100

Change across the range = the share in the last year − the share in the first

Everything else = total expenditure − the five named heads — a residual, not a head

Head	1986-87% of budget	2025-26% of budget	Change	Highest	Lowest
Interest On Debt	14.7	25.2	25.2 − 14.7 = +10.5 pp	30.5 2000-01	14.7 1986-87
Capital Outlay	14.7	17.7	17.7 − 14.7 = +3.0 pp	18.0 2024-25	6.7 1998-99
Defence	16.7	9.7	9.7 − 16.7 = -6.9 pp	17.5 1987-88	9.5 2022-23
Subsidies	8.7	8.4	8.4 − 8.7 = -0.2 pp	21.6 2020-21	7.1 1995-96
Loans To States & Enterprises	20.3	4.5	4.5 − 20.3 = -15.9 pp	20.3 1986-87	0.8 2017-18
Everything Else residual	24.9	34.5	34.5 − 24.9 = +9.6 pp	43.1 2019-20	23.2 1990-91

Total expenditure is revenue and capital together, so every share on this page is a share of the whole budget, not of one half of it. 2025-26 is a budget estimate; every other year is an actual.

“Everything else” is a residual, not a head. It is whatever is left after the five named heads — salaries, pensions, grants to states, transfers, the police, the ministries, everything — which is why it is the biggest number in most years and why no “largest head” claim here is made against it. On the five named heads, interest has been the largest in 36 of the 40 years. The exceptions are 1986-87 to 1988-89, when lending to the states led, and 2020-21, when subsidies overtook it. Defence has never once been the largest.

The collapse in lending is an accounting change, not a decision. On the Twelfth Finance Commission’s recommendation the Centre stopped borrowing on behalf of the states, and loans fell from 6.2% of the budget in 2004-05 to 2.2% in 2005-06. It never recovered. The same change cuts the capital outlay series in the same year, because that lending had been counted inside capital expenditure.

Two numbers worth keeping. At its worst the Centre spent ₹4.19 on interest for every rupee of capital outlay, in 1996-97; that ratio is now ₹1.43, and the three lowest readings since 1988-89 are the last three fiscal years. And in 1986-87 interest and capital outlay were thirteen crore apart — ₹9,246 against ₹9,259 — which is where the forty-year divergence starts.

The Numbers

All forty years, all six heads, as percentages of total Union government expenditure.

Fiscal year	Interest	Capital Outlay	Defence	Subsidies	Loans	Everything Else	Total spending₹ crore
1986-87	14.7	14.7	16.7	8.7	20.3	24.9	62,916
1987-88	16.5	13.6	17.5	8.8	18.7	24.9	68,261
1988-89	18.0	13.0	16.9	9.8	18.6	23.7	79,111
1989-90	19.1	12.7	15.5	11.3	18.2	23.2	92,908
1990-91	20.4	11.5	14.6	11.5	18.7	23.2	105,298
1991-92	23.9	9.9	14.7	11.0	16.0	24.4	111,058
1992-93	25.4	10.9	14.4	8.8	13.3	27.1	122,384
1993-94	25.9	9.2	15.4	8.2	14.4	26.8	141,712
1994-95	27.4	9.3	14.5	7.4	14.8	26.7	160,739
1995-96	28.1	7.9	15.1	7.1	13.6	28.2	178,276
1996-97	29.6	7.1	14.7	7.7	13.9	27.1	201,007
1997-98	28.3	7.6	15.2	8.0	14.7	26.2	232,054
1998-99	27.9	6.7	14.3	8.4	15.8	26.9	279,339
1999-00	30.3	8.1	15.8	8.2	8.4	29.3	298,053
2000-01	30.5	7.6	15.2	8.2	7.1	31.3	325,592
2001-02	29.7	7.3	15.0	8.6	9.5	30.0	362,310
2002-03	29.5	7.3	13.9	10.9	7.9	30.5	399,482
2003-04	29.2	8.0	14.1	10.4	6.8	31.4	424,992
2004-05	27.3	11.2	16.3	9.9	6.2	29.1	465,577
2005-06	26.2	10.9	15.9	9.4	2.2	35.3	505,738
2006-07	25.8	10.3	14.7	9.8	1.5	38.0	583,387
2007-08	24.0	15.0	12.9	10.0	1.6	36.6	712,671
2008-09	21.7	8.6	12.9	14.7	1.6	40.5	883,956
2009-10	20.8	9.5	13.8	13.8	1.5	40.6	1,024,487
2010-11	19.5	11.0	12.9	14.5	2.1	40.0	1,197,327
2011-12	20.9	10.6	13.1	16.7	1.6	37.1	1,304,365
2012-13	22.2	10.4	12.9	18.2	1.5	34.8	1,410,372
2013-14	24.0	10.8	13.0	16.3	1.2	34.6	1,559,447
2014-15	24.2	10.1	13.1	15.5	1.8	35.3	1,663,673
2015-16	24.7	12.7	12.6	14.7	1.5	33.8	1,790,783
2016-17	24.3	12.5	12.7	11.9	1.9	36.6	1,975,194
2017-18	24.7	11.4	12.9	10.5	0.8	39.6	2,141,973
2018-19	25.2	12.1	12.6	9.6	1.2	39.3	2,315,113
2019-20	22.8	11.6	11.9	9.8	0.9	43.1	2,686,330
2020-21	19.4	9.0	9.7	21.6	3.1	37.2	3,509,836
2021-22	21.2	14.1	9.7	13.3	1.5	40.2	3,793,801
2022-23	22.1	14.9	9.5	13.8	2.7	36.9	4,193,157
2023-24	23.9	17.7	10.0	9.8	3.6	34.9	4,443,447
2024-25	24.1	18.0	9.7	9.1	3.6	35.5	4,716,487
2025-26 BE	25.2	17.7	9.7	8.4	4.5	34.5	5,065,345

BE is a budget estimate; every other row is an actual. Rows are rounded to one decimal for print, so a row will not always add to exactly 100. Fiscal years run April to March. Source: RBI Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy, Tables 92 and 236, via the Anatomy of the Union Budget at politypolicy.com.