Governing India: What do we know and need to know?

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Abstract

This paper is part of the Heidelberg Inaugural Lecture delivered in the Alte Aula on 15 November 2017, and of a public lecture delivered at the centre for Economic and Social Sciences in Hyderabad. It presents a view regarding state capacity in India after discussing the extensive literature on clientelism. It proposes that state capacity in India has much to do with the way in which the central and sub-national states cogitate about policy goals and the means to achieve them. For example, is import substitution or export promotion the way to grow? Will growth trickle down to the poor or is nonmarket re-distribution the way to alleviate poverty? These issues are debated between puzzling bureaucrats and powering politicians, and when they reach a tipping point, we see that the state finds capacity to deliver even in a liberal democracy like India. The paper proposes a tipping point model for understanding state capacity in the Indian liberal democracy. It suggests a way for liberal democracies to fight clientelism and develop the capacity to pursue their goals, even though these goals are often unrealized.