
The Mittal Institute welcomes Prof. Karthik Muralidharan, Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California San Diego, for an October 9 talk on his new book, “Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance.” His book analyzes India’s governance challenges, especially in delivering essential public services. We spoke with Prof. Muralidharan to learn more about his book and what we can expect in the talk.
Mittal Institute: Thank you for speaking with us ahead of your book talk, Prof. Muralidharan. Why do you think better governance is more important for India’s progress than just growth or investment?
Karthik Muralidharan: India has achieved reasonable economic growth, but the benefits have not translated into widespread improvements in education, health, nutrition, or job quality. Conversations on improving development outcomes often focus on increasing the budgets for social sector programs. However, a key finding from two decades of high-quality research on service delivery in India is that the return on investment from improving governance and state capacity is often over ten times greater than simply expanding public spending in a “government as usual” way. In other words, public discourse focuses a lot more on the “top line” of budget allocations than on the “bottom line” of how spending translates into impact. A key reason for my writing this book is to synthesize insights from over 2 decades of primary research to make the case for investing in better public systems for delivery of essential services, and to provide a roadmap for how we can do this.
A key reason for my writing this book is to synthesize insights from over 2 decades of primary research to make the case for investing in better public systems for delivery of essential services, and to provide a roadmap for how we can do this.
Mittal Institute: You write that quality public services are essential to creating opportunity. Where do you see the biggest gaps in public service delivery today?
Karthik Muralidharan: The biggest gaps are in the basics: schooling, healthcare, nutrition, public safety, and justice. These are the building blocks of a society that enable sustained growth, and also facilitate broad-based access to these growth opportunities. But outcomes remain weak: over 50% of children in rural India finish primary school without being able to read at a second-grade level; 35% of children under 5 are stunted, and the backlog of cases in the courts exceeds 30 million. These weaknesses in public service delivery disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable and limit the ability of hundreds of millions of Indians to realize their potential.
Mittal Institute: Why do you emphasize state-level reforms rather than national solutions?
Karthik Muralidharan: India has more people than the entire Western hemisphere put together (!), and the average Indian state is in the top 20% of countries by population. Further, states are constitutionally responsible for most frontline service delivery spanning education, health, nutrition, police, welfare delivery, and land and labor laws. Yet, most of our policy discourse focuses on the national government, though most of the actions that affect citizen welfare are in the domain of states. So, we need a lot more attention to a state-level reform agenda and the book hopes to contribute to this discourse.
Mittal Institute: If you had to prioritize one reform area for India’s next 25 years, which would it be?
Karthik Muralidharan: It would be to systematically invest in building state capacity, and better public systems for the delivery of essential services. A key contribution of the book is to go beyond an abstract idea of “state capacity” and get into the black box of state effectiveness to explain how exactly the innards of the government function, and how we can systematically improve it by investing in better systems for data and data-driven decision making; public personnel management; improving the quality of public expenditure and revenue; and leveraging markets. Building capable public systems is not glamorous, but it is the foundation for delivering on every other development goal.
Building capable public systems is not glamorous, but it is the foundation for delivering on every other development goal.
Mittal Institute: What gives you the most hope that India can achieve the leap in governance you envision?
Karthik Muralidharan: Three things give me hope. First, many politicians and officials are also frustrated with the status quo and keen to improve systems. Second, we now have much better knowledge, data, and technology that make reforms more feasible. Third, voters are increasingly rewarding good governance, creating political incentives for reform. Together, I hope that these factors can create the enabling conditions for India to accelerate development by strengthening its state capacity.
Mittal Institute: Do you think that your argument and ideas apply beyond India?
Karthik Muralidharan: Yes! While the book focuses on India, the argument that state capacity is a binding constraint to development applies across much of the world. Other low- and middle-income countries also face similar challenges in delivering education, health, and welfare at scale. Even in high-income countries like the US, the discourse on the Abundance Agenda reflects a similar need to improve state effectiveness. The forthcoming global edition of my book (with Oxford University Press) has an extended preface that situates India’s experience in the wider discourse on development and draws out the lessons that are relevant worldwide.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mittal Institute, its staff, or its Steering Committee.