This August 15, India will complete 78 years of its existence as a state. Once formed, the goal of all states, whether nascent or long-established, is to become rich and powerful. States realise that prosperity is essential to grow powerful, and political strength is essential to remain prosperous. Between these two objectives, all other national goals are achievable or become feasible.
Karthik Muralidharan starts with the historical perspective—that state formation is driven by security considerations. Communities protected themselves from external threats by banding together—thereby greatly improving their chances of survival, and facilitating collaboration in other areas too. Once these states resolved their existential problems, they looked to improving their economic standing and catering to the needs of their people through industrial progress. And, after reaching the stage where there is no immediate threat of invasion or scarcity, they focused on the welfare of their citizens.
Accelerating India’s Development addresses the second stage of a state’s existence—welfare of its citizens. Post-Independence, India’s security concerns have been largely addressed. Now, the Indian state, by accelerating the pace of development, can look to achieving the goals of the second stage—citizen welfare—and focus on the third stage.
To its credit, India has from the start aspired to be a welfare state, despite an economy that makes it difficult to do so. So, what are the problems hindering India’s realisation of its full development potential? And why haven’t they been resolved yet?
The soul of India’s statehood is its democratic charter, which enfranchises every one of its 1.43 billion citizens, giving them a say in all national issues. These citizens are from various communities divided along economic, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and geographical lines. It goes to the credit of India’s democracy that all of these communities have a voice, can exercise their rights, and voice their demand for what they deem is in their best interests. The author captures the complexity of India with Joan Robinson’s quote: Whatever you can say about India, the opposite is also true. But while India’s diversity is one of its strengths, it is also a major stumbling block in decisive decision-making and policy formulation. Often, in the pursuit of consensus, the effectiveness of public policy is sacrificed on the altar of governance.
The author identifies the inability of government institutions to deliver to their full potential as a major problem hindering development. Yet, he argues that these government institutions are the best vehicles for delivering the most impact across the country in their respective areas. He attributes the stagnant framework of these institutions to their drawing inspiration from the imperial British system and the rigid Soviet-style Nomenklatura. At their best, these institutions deliver in mission-mode when they have to react to circumstances; at their worst, they are overburdened, understaffed, beset by corruption, and fail to execute their work. Currently, the government and its institutions falter at the last-mile connectivity and in ensuring that aid effectively reaches the lowest rungs of the country. The author argues that by empowering these institutions, the quality and delivery of reforms can be improved.
Any reform, he says, should answer two questions: Can it solve the problem? And, can it be implemented? With over 20 years of firsthand experience in industry and academia and working in testing data-driven reforms in education, universal basic income, and governance, he, firstly, lays out and frames the problems—a glimpse of which is given above. Secondly, he lists the ways in which institutions can be strengthened with additional hires, funding, and authority to act as enablers of growth and development. He notes that by adopting a data-driven approach to observing and resolving problems, institutions can overcome their vulnerabilities, improve effectiveness, and also reduce leakages. The author demonstrates the merits of this data-driven approach through various research studies he and others have carried out. According to him, this approach to development aligns with the state’s strengths in carrying out mission-mode reform. His recommendations for various sectors are backed by multiple research studies.
What Karthik Muralidharan suggests are small reforms and tweaks to existing procedures that, through the use of data, can have great impact on development. At the same time, as these reforms are non-political, they have a good chance of being implemented. By utilising the existing framework for development and altering it to be more responsive to a more data-backed approach, governments and institutions can tap into untapped avenues of growth that align with its consensus-bound policies. These consensus-bound solutions can be implemented in sectors such as education, health, policing, judiciary, tax collection, welfare, job creation, economic growth, and public finance. All of this can be done without altering the fundamental nature of the institutions and by taking into account the problems plaguing our country. In other words, these solutions can be easily executed to facilitate economic growth and eliminate problems in service delivery.
In offering a practical, data-driven roadmap rooted in institutional reform rather than disruptive overhaul, the book makes a compelling case for how India can unlock its full potential—not by reinventing the state, but by enabling it to function as it was always meant to.
Maitreya is a Policy Research Intern at PIC.