In moments of national anxiety, language hardens. Words like security, emergency, and national interest acquire a near-sacred aura, demanding assent rather than scrutiny. India has witnessed this transformation before. We are seeing it again in the Health Security se National Security Cess Bill, 2025—a legislation that asks parliament to accept a new fiscal instrument in the name of collective safety, while quietly reordering the relationship between the Union, the states, and citizens who bear the cost.
At first glance, the Bill announces an unimpeachable aim: mobilising resources for health preparedness and national security. Who could dispute the importance of either?
The title itself offers a clue. Why does an English statute use the word ‘se’? It is neither legally necessary nor linguistically neutral. Laws are not advertisements; they are contracts between the State and the people. When legislative titles begin sounding like slogans, something deeper is at work. This is governance by signalling, where persuasive tone takes precedence over constitutional clarity.
At its heart, this legislation introduces yet another cess. This time in the name of health preparedness and national security. India is no stranger to such levies. Jawaharlal Nehru had warned parliament decades ago: “Taxation must never become a substitute for planning.” Yet today, the Union increasingly relies on cesses that accumulate revenue without a clear, democratic plan for its use. What unites them is not their intent, but design: cesses sit outside the divisible pool, beyond the guarantees of revenue sharing with the states.
This shift has been gradual but decisive. Today, a growing portion of Centre’s revenue is raised in ways that circumvent fiscal devolution. The Bill deepens this imbalance. States are expected to deliver frontline health services, manage outbreaks, regulate industries, and respond to environmental crises, but with shrinking fiscal space and limited voice over the funds raised.
Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in Tamil Nadu. For decades, the state’s public health achievements have rested on a simple principle: decentralised capacity. Primary health centres are staffed and trusted, Anganwadi networks embedded in communities, disease surveillance rooted in district-level administration. As Chief Minister M K Stalin has repeatedly argued, “Strong states do not weaken the nation; they are the foundation of a strong Union.” Our public health outcomes prove this truth, born of the Dravidian understanding—welfare is not charity, but a right.
Against this backdrop, a centrally-retained cess for ‘health security’ feels less like support and more like erasure.
Equally troubling is the design of the cess. The Bill levies charges not on production or consumption, but on the capacity of machines used in specified manufacturing processes. In plain terms, factories are taxed for what their machines can produce, not for what they actually do. Even when units are shut, under maintenance, or operating below capacity, the cess liability persists. Relief exists, but through a cumbersome abatement mechanism that places the burden of proof squarely on small manufacturers.
This is taxation divorced from economic reality.
For large corporations, fixed monthly levies are an inconvenience. For smaller enterprises, they can be existential. Tamil Nadu’s economy is sustained by nearly 10 lakh smaller businesses—many clustered in food processing, packaging, and allied sectors. Their resilience lies in flexibility: scaling up and down when needed. A rigid cess negates that flexibility. What is presented as regulation risks becoming eviction.
There is a deeper irony here. If health is truly the concern, discouraging harmful products through pricing and regulation is one route. Taxing machines regardless of output neither reduces consumption intelligently, nor strengthens health systems directly.
The Bill equips the State with the full grammar of coercion—search, seizure, sealing, confiscation, and even arrest. Powers that might be justified as exceptions are here written into routine law, stripped of strong judicial guardrails. Small manufacturers in Tamil Nadu recognise this terrain well. When regulation speaks the language of fear, formality becomes a luxury many cannot afford.
What is perhaps most striking is what the Bill omits. No statutory commitment to share proceeds with the states. No independent mechanism to audit outcomes. We are asked to believe that resources raised will automatically translate into preparedness. History gives us little reason for such faith. This is where the politics of the present moment persist.
Since 2014, centralisation has increasingly been framed as efficiency and federalism as inconvenience. The language of one nation is often deployed to justify narrowing the space for states’ autonomy. Yet public health crises do not unfold uniformly. Pollution in Delhi, heat stress in Tamil Nadu, floods in the northeast, drought in central India, each demands local intelligence and fiscal freedom.
Dravidian thought has long resisted the concentration of power disguised as unity. It insists that democracy does not weaken when power is shared; it deepens. Health security, like food or educational security, emerges from proximity: from the states empowered to plan, spend, and respond without waiting for permission or compensation.
India does need investment in health systems and preparedness. But revenue must be raised through instruments that are proportionate, transparent and sharable. Funds must follow responsibility. And laws must speak the language of rights as much as they speak of risks.
Security that silences scrutiny is not security at all. It is uncertainty—just carefully renamed.
Thamizhachi Thangapandian | MP from South Chennai and member of the Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth & Sports
(Views are personal)