Sneha Divakaran’s Reviews > Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance > Status Update

Judiciary - practicum based training suggestion seems a bit repetitive now, though the logic for repetition is appreciated. A judicial process reforms commission to suggest ways to make judiciary more efficient - seems like it’s right out of yes minister. Such a committee is probably good to have, but without a Law that requires the govt to listen to them, it will only make for yes minister scenes.

Police reform ideas - perception studies as an institutional data point from which to look at public safety, is not that radical but is a hard sell. Competencies and not seniority for promotions is well intended - could be a litigation minefield though.
Felt like this chapter was a last minute (month in this case?) add-on. Ideas are essentially repeats from admin reform chapters. Or maybe it’s just that intuitive!

On healthcare

On the education system in India - lot of ideas and pessimistic out optimistic views, that one can easily agree with and appreciate. And there are some that aren’t intuitive and perhaps merit another reading or greater depth of knowledge for better understanding.

PPP for providing public option to opt in or out of govt provided services - such as DBT instead of grain in the FPS, or charter schools which don’t have admission exclusion, but are funded by govt, with a much larger ability to manage staff etc. Both ideas are important. Crisply conveyed. Lots of food for thought.

The chapter on Personnel management is well thought out. Much food for thought. Federalism and Decentralisation makes it looks like our polity is so obviously flawed and that it’s simple to fix, but it forgets the several cogs in the wheel that are incentivised to decentralise, “only up to their level!” Public Finance also seems to be on point, though I wish he dealt with expenditure /contract management as well.

The intro starts off deceptively like a normal essay on India since independence. And then it segues suavely into state capacity and why it’s lacking with hearings, sub-sub-headings, neatly dissecting everything.

Ch2 politely tells us what the politician’s context is and why he is and should be a stakeholder in state-building.

For chapter 3, I recommend listening to the latest episode of the Seen and the Unseen.