Every incoming government faces massive expectations. This time is arguably greater given the ambitious agenda of becoming a developed economy by 2047. The ability to deliver on these promises depends critically on the quality of the state’s capabilities.
Why is state capability important? A capable state—in terms of its ability to plan and execute—has been critical in the history of national development. It is essential for designing and implementing policies and programmes, delivering public goods and services, collecting taxes and fees, preparing and managing contracts with the private sector, and regulating markets. Its performance manifests in the form of quality of public services, timely completion of infrastructure investments, improvements to the ease of doing business, the strength of regulatory systems, and so on.
These are the foundational requirements for national development and economic growth. A capable state ensures that the political will and bureaucratic intent on these areas captured in the form of laws, rules, guidelines, policies, and programmes are implemented with fidelity and quality.
This insight on the critical role of the state is often lost amid public debates centering on cliched big-bang reforms like the agriculture subsidies reforms, ease of doing business, factor market reforms, unleashing entrepreneurial energies, privatization, and so on.
In fact, all the so-called big bang reforms, even with enabling legislations, are about tens or hundreds of small steps whose effective design and execution depend on state capability. It’s easy to overlook that the public and private sectors are two sides of the same coin. A strong economy cannot be built without a capable state.
Poor state capability is like the leaky bucket that drains resources and efforts with little to show for them. It is, therefore, only appropriate that the government’s highest priority should be to create the institutional capabilities across all government levels to realize its intentions and promises.
In India’s federal structure, states and local governments are at the cutting edge of implementation, service delivery and generally getting stuff done.
The quality of common public services—school and college education to skill development, public health to primary and secondary healthcare, agricultural extension to industrial promotion, municipal services and social welfare—is critically dependent on the capabilities of sub-national governments and their entities.
There is a plethora of national programmes designed at the Centre but implemented by sub-national governments. In this context, in addition to setting national goals and providing financing, the central government’s role would be to support sub-national governments in effective planning and execution.
This would involve enhancing the capabilities of sub-national governments by providing technical assistance in design and implementation, fostering peer engagement and constructive competition among executing units, and monitoring and evaluation.
This higher-level role clarity should be complemented with efforts to equip the Indian bureaucracy at all levels with the capabilities to get stuff done. This demands sustained efforts in at least six directions.
The foremost requirement for a strong state is capable personnel. This calls for good-quality training and other forms of capability development. Unfortunately, training today is one-off theoretical and superficial as to have become largely a perfunctory exercise. Instead, they should be prioritized as an administrative necessity, cover all cadres and levels, inculcate practical knowledge and skills, and be delivered continuously in a blended mode.
The scope of training should include work management skills that improve the quality of supervision, monitoring and follow-up.
Second, each state government should be encouraged to prioritize building a proficient administrative training and technical assistance-providing institution.
Apart from offering training, it can be the in-house think tank to assist with process requirements like policy design, landscape scans and sector studies, data analytics, and evaluations and audits for the state and local governments. This institution should anchor partnerships with universities, research institutions and think tanks to create a knowledge ecosystem focused on practical policy research and development.
Third, the need for internal technical expertise should be met by institutionalizing fixed-tenure lateral entry as officers and hiring individual experts as consultants for specific tasks. This will also limit the widespread practice of outsourcing core activities, including their processes, to management consulting firms.
Fourth, there should be a conscious effort to create a culture of avoiding anecdotes and narrow personal predilections and deliberating with evidence to inform policy design and execution. Such evidence should include analysis of administrative data, sample surveys and qualitative studies. The process and quality of deliberation are important. Even if the decision is ultimately political, it should be made after considering all available evidence.
Fifth, there’s a need to introduce some form of performance accountability. State capability cannot be built without changing the incentives on performance (or non-performance). Those egregiously poor or corrupt should not only be not promoted but also should be forcibly retired.
Promotions should be linked to actual performance. These might be the hardest to pursue, especially given the challenges with reliable performance measurement.
Finally, there should be a campaign to infuse a higher sense of purpose and public service among public officials.
As economist Lant Pritchett said, accountability must come not from traditional top-down accounting but from bottom-up ownership of the account centering on public service.
The public narrative that “government is the problem” should give way to “government is the problem solver”, and public officials must internalize this narrative.
Fortunately, there are some ongoing efforts in all six directions. But they must be supplemented, deepened, become more focused and implemented with a strong collective commitment like with the Swachh Bharat Mission or Make in India campaigns.
Happily, efforts aimed at state capability improvements will not strain the budget. Instead, it requires a long-drawn and painstaking national endeavour. We also need to accept that its trajectory will be non-linear and non-uniform.
This investment in building institutional capital will generate the highest value for money in the long term among all investments made by the country. It should, therefore, become the topmost priority for the new government.
Gulzar Natarajan is a civil servant. The views expressed are personal.
