India's fatal flaw: a state too weak to rise

India's core problem is not what you think

India faces education, health, manufacturing and urbanization crises. But none can be solved without fixing the Indian state itself, the principal actor shaping development.

Everyone believes in the state, nobody fixes it

The Bharatiya Janata Party, communists and nearly everyone between share a belief that the state should control the economy and direct social change. Yet there is little effort to improve how it functions.

Sidewalks reveal the rot in urban India

Over the past decade, more than one point five million people, mostly of working age, have been killed in road accidents in India.

The state cannot enforce the rule of law

Violence has declined, but police remain predators as much as protectors. Tens of millions of cases languish in overwhelmed courts. If businesses cannot uphold contracts and women cannot walk safely, development foundations remain dangerously fragile.

Public schools fail because teachers vote

High malnutrition and stunting diminish prospects for tens of millions of children.Learning outcomes in public schools remain disheartening.Children do not vote; teachers do, and hiring teachers is a lucrative source of rent and political patronage.

The state has a bullock cart engine and Rolls-Royce brakes

The Indian state is relatively small by public employees per capita.These employees are frequently moved through the transfer raj, a source of rent for bureaucrats and politicians.

“the engine of a bullock cart and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce”

Centralization strangles cities and towns

Unlike China and the United States, India concentrates public employment in its states rather than local governments. This concentration has deprived India's cities and towns of authority and agency to solve their own problems.

A weak state serves the powerful well

Official reports have documented these failings for six decades.They persist because a weak state provides immense rents to the political class and bureaucracy.Public employees oppose reform.A weak state is also easier to capture and exploit.

Technology enables populism, not reform

India has built world class digital public infrastructure, improving taxation, procurement and welfare payments.But these strengths make transferring money to voters remarkably easy, encouraging competitive populism while efforts to strengthen core public goods have faltered.

Cooperation with society requires trust

States can improve capabilities by drawing on civil society and business.Many public goods are co-produced by state and society.

“co-produced”

Strategic weakness is a deliberate choice

Core institutions of the Indian state are weakening.This strategic weakness is not accidental but a deliberate choice by India's political class.Unless that choice changes, India cannot meet its development goals in the next few decades.