The Twelfth Finance Commission has broken new ground in several key areas and made recommendations which, if fully implemented, will have a far-reaching impact on the finances and functioning of government in the country at all levels. In order that the issues raised by the TFC report are debated in a wider forum, the EPW invited some of the leading scholars in the field to join in a symposium by contributing papers to this special issue. An overview of the papers and the issues is presented in this introductory article.