# Against Managerial Solutions: Why India's Problems Require Ideological Reform
"Hiring doctors in rural areas is often expensive for the government. And doctors are often absent due to the government's lack of enforcement. So train more people vocationally in medical skills. A 2-year training course is enough to learn about the most common illnesses and their remedies. And people who've gone through these courses will tend to be from the rural communities, who will have more incentive to stay in their communities."
I remain highly skeptical of this approach. Yes, a two-year course is brief compared to a medical degree, but it still requires substantial time and investment in human capital.
The main reason untrained medical practitioners remain in their home villages is not benevolence but economic incentives. These village-level practitioners have not undergone formal credentialing and therefore rely on local reputation to build trust with patients. If they leave their village, they must invest considerable time and energy establishing themselves elsewhere.
However, once they receive official government licensing, they can relocate to higher-income areas without the burden of reputation-building. Hence, we will soon witness the migration of these credentialed practitioners away from villages. I should clarify that I do not oppose this reform—I simply contend it will not achieve its stated policy objective.
The medical sector remains controlled by a cartel of over-credentialed practitioners in most parts of the world, including India. General practice need not be as expensive as current research suggests.
"At the same time, create better data collection mechanism such that randomly selected citizens can be asked for feedback about their experience in government clinics. With the threat of feedback, government-employed doctors will be forced to stay present in their clinics to serve ailing citizens. There's statistical evidence that surveying only 1 in 25 citizens is enough to force government employees to do their job correctly."
Why pursue this convoluted process? I doubt such measures will prove effective. Why not simply abolish the government hospital system and adopt a healthcare voucher system? Even Nordic social democracies avoid centralized bureaucracies for healthcare delivery, relying instead on local governments and voucher systems. The NHS in Britain represents a peculiar outlier and arguably the worst-managed system in Europe.
Since you claim federalism is impossible, the voucher system presents the obvious alternative. The same principle applies to education.
"The West can legitimately have this debate because their government can do what they say. In India, there's so much waste in government spend that it would be more valuable to spend the effort making it efficient rather than debating whether it should spend or not."
This analysis is fundamentally mistaken. Precisely because the Indian state performs so poorly, much Western debate centers on fears of government waste. In India, the proliferation of new schemes and departments rarely faces such skepticism.
When the probability of government waste is extraordinarily high, one should shrink rather than expand its scope—as demonstrated by West Bengal's recent decision to provide subsidized tea and biscuits at airports. This stems from India's taxation system and voter entitlement.
The Indian system heavily burdens the top segment of society while expecting them to subsidize the remainder. The government refuses to dismiss poor performers because most Indians desire secure employment for their underachieving offspring. Government waste imposes no direct costs on Indian voters since they contribute little to the system, while middle-class families believe they benefit from such waste despite their social media protestations.
Ultimately, the ideology of socialism represents the fundamental problem and must be directly confronted.
The civil service's human capital deficiencies are vastly overstated. Lant Pritchett observed that India's best doctors are government employees—and so are the worst. They perform poorly in government service but excel in private practice after hours. This reflects a documented phenomenon rather than mere anecdote.
This demonstrates that Indian civil servants likely possess higher raw intelligence than private sector counterparts, given their superior compensation. Indians must abandon the myth of the internally motivated, benevolent civil servant. Western government employees perform adequately because they face dismissal for poor performance. The solution is not complicated.
One need only increase management salaries and empower them to hire and fire at discretion, while setting appropriate wages and working hours. This constitutes a management problem, not a human capital deficiency. Ninety-five percent of government positions require no exceptional intelligence and minimal training beyond what one acquires within weeks of employment.
However, implementing these reforms requires attacking the socialist ideology of the Indian state rather than merely reasoning with the citizenry's pathological expectations.
Looks like a worthy read. Curious though — does he mention the deep rooted malaise of entrenched corruption in the states? Greater devolution of power often means more corruption. We hear grand pronouncements from the PM about eradicating corruption, but in practice it seems to get quietly ignored. I live in Karnataka, where corruption is rampant and quite open — projects are routinely announced mainly to create money making opportunities, and everyday dealings with departments like tax, excise, agriculture, property registration, electricity, and water involve shameless demands for bribes. Any serious development agenda must first deal with this huge obstacle first.
He does! I'll have to verify this but he claims that what citizens perceive as "corruption" is a relatively small part of the problem. The bigger problem is inefficient spend. For instance, for every rupee in lost spend, we lose about 20 paise due to corruption and 80 paise due to inefficient spend. Of course, depending on how you look at it, you can call inefficient spend corruption too.
If a teacher refuses to show up even after being hired, is it corruption, inefficient spend or weak state capacity?
But basically, if a small amount of money is invested in data collection to make sure that correct outcomes are reported, this problem can be resolved to a great degree.
I recommend reading the chapter on data collection to get an idea of his proposals. And according to him, they do work. He has an NGO called CEGIS that advises state governments on implementing these ideas. So he has first hand experience of this.
A wholesome read though I wonder if he's underestimating the effects of corruption especially at local levels as a major hindrance in implementing any scheme. I'm also curious to know how to deal with reservations and quota systems as we move forward.
He does talk about corruption in details. I'll have to verify this but he claims that what citizens perceive as "corruption" is a relatively small part of the problem. The bigger problem is inefficient spend. For instance, for every rupee in lost spend, we lose about 20 paise due to corruption and 80 paise due to inefficient spend. Of course, depending on how you look at it, you can call inefficient spend corruption too.
If a teacher refuses to show up even after being hired, is it corruption, inefficient spend or weak state capacity?
But basically, if a small amount of money is invested in data collection to make sure that correct outcomes are reported, this problem can be resolved to a great degree.
I recommend reading the chapter on data collection to get an idea of his proposals. And according to him, they do work. He has an NGO called CEGIS that advises state governments on implementing these ideas. So he has first hand experience of this.
That’s an interesting observation ‘inefficiency is causing more damage than even corruption’.
This is a positive development as it’s more a solvable issue than corruption, at least it’s possible to address it more effectively. Also good to see data collection as a possible solution.
I don't doubt he is sincere. But there is a difference in advising government and being a part of it. My point is on the latter. There are many unknown voices within the CS who try to make a difference - but ultimately the system defeats them. Thus it is important to know the experience of those within.
Going by what he describes, he's actually worked with bureaucrats to implement the suggestions he says. These have been vetted by bureaucrats themselves to have proven to work.
I sort of disagree with the approach itself here. All of these approaches treat India as a deficient western country rather than a place with its own challenges. Looking at deficiencies in the system leads to that kind of perspective.
We can graduate many many many more medical students for our population, but we choose not to. We can have many many more PG seats, we just choose not to. The US has the same credentialist mafia in medicine, and they solve that problem by importing doctors from abroad. We can't quite do that.
Govt schools and govt hospitals aren't a last resort - AIIMS and Kendriya Vidyalayas are also govt-run. I know govt schools have gotten a facelift in the past decade or two, with high salaries, focused teachers and such. What govt schools won't offer is tailoring curriculum to parents/students need. Issues with govt schools is the same in the US too, possibly worse, just private schools are prohibitively expensive.
Lot of problems at the local level are because the average citizen doesn't have the power to affect their public services, local administration, or local schools. I suppose they rightly feared this would lead to regionalism which is why they have a central service that deputes teachers and other civil servants. The US decided in favor of people being regionalistic if they so want, and devolved power to local areas. Which meant racism has been much harder to eradicate, but people get to decide what happens with the schools in their neighborhood that their children go to.
I'm not sure dependency on the state is an entirely bad thing, especially if the alternative is dependency on groups inimical to the state - e.g. religious groups that fan separatism.
Basically, government provided services suffer from low quality. KVs and AIIMS are the exceptions that prove the rule. Plus they're centrally administered which does make a difference. Union govt services usually tend to be better.
The question is about doctors in PHCs, CHC, etc and teachers in locally run government schools. Even if you hire more doctors/teachers, how do you deal with high abseenteism, inflation of outcomes, etc?
You don't really need tailoring of curriculum for basic literacy/numeracy. You just need more teachers and make the ones you hired show up. And the problem with hiring more is that there's a lot of spend on salaries/pensions. How do you resolve your understaffing problem if the salary cost is blowing a hole in your budget? So better hire vocationally trained doctors (similar to RNs or PAs in the US) or teachers on a contract basis.
And the average citizen doesn't have much power because local governments don't have much budgets. Spend at local level is very low. So the power to influence is low too. And you're right. I was going through the Constituent Assembly Debates and one of the issues in favor of centralization was breaking the back of regional elites (caste, religion, tribe, etc).
The dependency on state thing is debatable. I think we can have that debate once the Indian State is strong enough to enforce its writ on those who want to exercise street vetos.
P.S: "religious groups that fan separatism" -- I see what you did there ;)
I think 'street vetos' aren't combated by fighting them with force as they happen. Modi seems to have succeeded in fixing that issue in Gujarat during his CMship without force on the streets. There's a whole ecosystem to enable the street vetos, and funding people so they don't have to hold regular jobs, and don't have to fear jails, is a big part of it. If a group of people decide they are sufficiently aggrieved and sufficiently don't care, government can't do all that much as we saw in the first Trump term. There are elected representatives who will take the side of the street veto and there's very little you can do then. Street vetos don't originate on the street.
From my experience looking at bad public schools in the bay area, the issue is not that teachers are bad or absent. It's not low salaries. Some of it is the families in the area not raising their kids right. But A LOT of it is parents not holding teachers accountable. That's literally the only difference I notice in the US. It's not that poorer parents don't value education, but they don't know or don't have enough time, resources or confidence to hold teachers accountable.
The teachers in KVs are also recruited by the government, and they also serve remote areas. There are many good govt schools too, usually in cities. The recruitment process and such is the same. But why are they absent more in some areas versus others? That could be good to study.
One of the problems here is whenever you bring up such a problem, no one bothers to talk to the people affected/responsible for their point of view, or get the data about that. Everyone already seems to know the answer - they are dishonest, they have tuition classes they spend their time on, the principal is also on the take, we are like this only.
As for medical students, there's a lot of talk about the doctor deficit in India. Someone wrote an article a while ago when the Ukraine war started, about why Indians were studying medicine in Ukraine and even other countries like Tajikistan. They did the math and found that the doctor deficit in India is the same as the number of indians studying medicine abroad. There are more people who want to be doctors, but they aren't given the chance for various reasons. If we expand the number of medical colleges, as the govt seems to be doing, it could work better for us.
I don't think salaries are a problem. We have a huge population. We have to serve them all, and it's going to cost money, and we've to figure out how to do it.
And generally, I've started to develop a different idea about absenteeism - I think our work hours and the amount we're exploited and the services we have around us are fundamentally incompatible with family life. Those who value family more than their employer will be absent more. Many of our festivals aren't even official holidays. Many of us work far away from our place of origin. There is no accommodation for much of this even in the public sector and there's even less accommodation in the private sector. If we accommodate work to go with life, I feel like absenteeism will go away by itself.
Karthik does gather data about schools. Basically, other than the KVs, Sainik Schools and Navodaya Vidyalayas run by the Central govt, others run by state govts face issues with overburdened teachers and teacher absences.
Teachers were absent as much as 60% of the time (I think, don't remember it offhand). The figure was slightly better in urban areas but not by much. That shows up in ASER's data on learning outcomes too. These absences really can't be explained by anything other than lack of enforcement. The UP govt cracked down on teacher attendance and the next 5-7 years showed an improvement in learning outcomes. Check the UP data in ASER 2024 vs ASER 2014.
With medical students the problem isn't number of doctors. You don't need MBBS degrees to serve the vast majority of ailments. A simple RN or PA type 2-3 year vocational course is sufficient. And there's data to show that MBBS and MD grads don't prefer to serve in rural areas anyway.
Hard disagree on salaries. Salaries are a HUGE problem. Basically the Centre spends about 35% (according to the latest budget) on salaries and pension alone. Many states including powerhouses like TN and Maharashtra spend 40%+ on salaries and pensions. Crucial positions (teachers, doctors, police, judges, etc) are understaffed by at least 20-30% in most cases. And this deficit extends to number of govt employees too. Ramping up the deficit in hiring at these salary levels isn't sustainable.
That's why Karthik suggests a contract based model kinda like the Agniveer one. And that's showing success in states like Telangana where it has been piloted. You give a decent starting salary, there's exposure through the government and you don't have to budget for pensions. There's simply no way to hire more govt employees at current salary levels without having the deficit go through the roof.
About absenteeism - that does apply to an extent. But you can't explain away 60% absence with that model. And that's part of the problem. If you hire teachers from urban areas and have them work in rural areas, absenteeism will be high. Instead hiring from the same communities on contract gives an incentive to turn up on time as well as keep salary budgets under check.
I have worked long enough as a civil servant to state that the biggest problem lies in honest civil servants being blocked by an eco- system which rewards inefficiency by treating apples and oranges as one
The author seems well intentioned, but to know the malaise it is perhaps more educative to read TR Raghunandan and other candid bureaucratic memoirs
But he does address this issue. How do you resolve corruption and inefficient spend? He has worked in advising state governments on these issues through his NGO and he claims that these solutions do work in practice.
Copying response from another comment below:
He does! I'll have to verify this but he claims that what citizens perceive as "corruption" is a relatively small part of the problem. The bigger problem is inefficient spend. For instance, for every rupee in lost spend, we lose about 20 paise due to corruption and 80 paise due to inefficient spend. Of course, depending on how you look at it, you can call inefficient spend corruption too.
If a teacher refuses to show up even after being hired, is it corruption, inefficient spend or weak state capacity?
But basically, if a small amount of money is invested in data collection to make sure that correct outcomes are reported, this problem can be resolved to a great degree.
I recommend reading the chapter on data collection to get an idea of his proposals. And according to him, they do work. He has an NGO called CEGIS that advises state governments on implementing these ideas. So he has first hand experience of this.
In fact if you visit the MOSPI portal you will see how much effort the Government puts into data collection. The problem is that Deep State Western agencies don't want to acknowledge this
# Against Managerial Solutions: Why India's Problems Require Ideological Reform
"Hiring doctors in rural areas is often expensive for the government. And doctors are often absent due to the government's lack of enforcement. So train more people vocationally in medical skills. A 2-year training course is enough to learn about the most common illnesses and their remedies. And people who've gone through these courses will tend to be from the rural communities, who will have more incentive to stay in their communities."
I remain highly skeptical of this approach. Yes, a two-year course is brief compared to a medical degree, but it still requires substantial time and investment in human capital.
The main reason untrained medical practitioners remain in their home villages is not benevolence but economic incentives. These village-level practitioners have not undergone formal credentialing and therefore rely on local reputation to build trust with patients. If they leave their village, they must invest considerable time and energy establishing themselves elsewhere.
However, once they receive official government licensing, they can relocate to higher-income areas without the burden of reputation-building. Hence, we will soon witness the migration of these credentialed practitioners away from villages. I should clarify that I do not oppose this reform—I simply contend it will not achieve its stated policy objective.
The medical sector remains controlled by a cartel of over-credentialed practitioners in most parts of the world, including India. General practice need not be as expensive as current research suggests.
"At the same time, create better data collection mechanism such that randomly selected citizens can be asked for feedback about their experience in government clinics. With the threat of feedback, government-employed doctors will be forced to stay present in their clinics to serve ailing citizens. There's statistical evidence that surveying only 1 in 25 citizens is enough to force government employees to do their job correctly."
Why pursue this convoluted process? I doubt such measures will prove effective. Why not simply abolish the government hospital system and adopt a healthcare voucher system? Even Nordic social democracies avoid centralized bureaucracies for healthcare delivery, relying instead on local governments and voucher systems. The NHS in Britain represents a peculiar outlier and arguably the worst-managed system in Europe.
Since you claim federalism is impossible, the voucher system presents the obvious alternative. The same principle applies to education.
"The West can legitimately have this debate because their government can do what they say. In India, there's so much waste in government spend that it would be more valuable to spend the effort making it efficient rather than debating whether it should spend or not."
This analysis is fundamentally mistaken. Precisely because the Indian state performs so poorly, much Western debate centers on fears of government waste. In India, the proliferation of new schemes and departments rarely faces such skepticism.
When the probability of government waste is extraordinarily high, one should shrink rather than expand its scope—as demonstrated by West Bengal's recent decision to provide subsidized tea and biscuits at airports. This stems from India's taxation system and voter entitlement.
The Indian system heavily burdens the top segment of society while expecting them to subsidize the remainder. The government refuses to dismiss poor performers because most Indians desire secure employment for their underachieving offspring. Government waste imposes no direct costs on Indian voters since they contribute little to the system, while middle-class families believe they benefit from such waste despite their social media protestations.
Ultimately, the ideology of socialism represents the fundamental problem and must be directly confronted.
The civil service's human capital deficiencies are vastly overstated. Lant Pritchett observed that India's best doctors are government employees—and so are the worst. They perform poorly in government service but excel in private practice after hours. This reflects a documented phenomenon rather than mere anecdote.
This demonstrates that Indian civil servants likely possess higher raw intelligence than private sector counterparts, given their superior compensation. Indians must abandon the myth of the internally motivated, benevolent civil servant. Western government employees perform adequately because they face dismissal for poor performance. The solution is not complicated.
One need only increase management salaries and empower them to hire and fire at discretion, while setting appropriate wages and working hours. This constitutes a management problem, not a human capital deficiency. Ninety-five percent of government positions require no exceptional intelligence and minimal training beyond what one acquires within weeks of employment.
However, implementing these reforms requires attacking the socialist ideology of the Indian state rather than merely reasoning with the citizenry's pathological expectations.
Looks like a worthy read. Curious though — does he mention the deep rooted malaise of entrenched corruption in the states? Greater devolution of power often means more corruption. We hear grand pronouncements from the PM about eradicating corruption, but in practice it seems to get quietly ignored. I live in Karnataka, where corruption is rampant and quite open — projects are routinely announced mainly to create money making opportunities, and everyday dealings with departments like tax, excise, agriculture, property registration, electricity, and water involve shameless demands for bribes. Any serious development agenda must first deal with this huge obstacle first.
He does! I'll have to verify this but he claims that what citizens perceive as "corruption" is a relatively small part of the problem. The bigger problem is inefficient spend. For instance, for every rupee in lost spend, we lose about 20 paise due to corruption and 80 paise due to inefficient spend. Of course, depending on how you look at it, you can call inefficient spend corruption too.
If a teacher refuses to show up even after being hired, is it corruption, inefficient spend or weak state capacity?
But basically, if a small amount of money is invested in data collection to make sure that correct outcomes are reported, this problem can be resolved to a great degree.
I recommend reading the chapter on data collection to get an idea of his proposals. And according to him, they do work. He has an NGO called CEGIS that advises state governments on implementing these ideas. So he has first hand experience of this.
For State Finances there are separate Reports called State Financial Audit Reports. Likewise for Union Government
https://cag.gov.in/en/audit-report/details/121808
You can see the detailed reports for each State and UT as well as comprehensive audit reports on Schemes
That's a very valuable resource. Thanks for sharing!
A wholesome read though I wonder if he's underestimating the effects of corruption especially at local levels as a major hindrance in implementing any scheme. I'm also curious to know how to deal with reservations and quota systems as we move forward.
Thank you for reading!
He does talk about corruption in details. I'll have to verify this but he claims that what citizens perceive as "corruption" is a relatively small part of the problem. The bigger problem is inefficient spend. For instance, for every rupee in lost spend, we lose about 20 paise due to corruption and 80 paise due to inefficient spend. Of course, depending on how you look at it, you can call inefficient spend corruption too.
If a teacher refuses to show up even after being hired, is it corruption, inefficient spend or weak state capacity?
But basically, if a small amount of money is invested in data collection to make sure that correct outcomes are reported, this problem can be resolved to a great degree.
I recommend reading the chapter on data collection to get an idea of his proposals. And according to him, they do work. He has an NGO called CEGIS that advises state governments on implementing these ideas. So he has first hand experience of this.
That’s an interesting observation ‘inefficiency is causing more damage than even corruption’.
This is a positive development as it’s more a solvable issue than corruption, at least it’s possible to address it more effectively. Also good to see data collection as a possible solution.
I don't doubt he is sincere. But there is a difference in advising government and being a part of it. My point is on the latter. There are many unknown voices within the CS who try to make a difference - but ultimately the system defeats them. Thus it is important to know the experience of those within.
Going by what he describes, he's actually worked with bureaucrats to implement the suggestions he says. These have been vetted by bureaucrats themselves to have proven to work.
I sort of disagree with the approach itself here. All of these approaches treat India as a deficient western country rather than a place with its own challenges. Looking at deficiencies in the system leads to that kind of perspective.
We can graduate many many many more medical students for our population, but we choose not to. We can have many many more PG seats, we just choose not to. The US has the same credentialist mafia in medicine, and they solve that problem by importing doctors from abroad. We can't quite do that.
Govt schools and govt hospitals aren't a last resort - AIIMS and Kendriya Vidyalayas are also govt-run. I know govt schools have gotten a facelift in the past decade or two, with high salaries, focused teachers and such. What govt schools won't offer is tailoring curriculum to parents/students need. Issues with govt schools is the same in the US too, possibly worse, just private schools are prohibitively expensive.
Lot of problems at the local level are because the average citizen doesn't have the power to affect their public services, local administration, or local schools. I suppose they rightly feared this would lead to regionalism which is why they have a central service that deputes teachers and other civil servants. The US decided in favor of people being regionalistic if they so want, and devolved power to local areas. Which meant racism has been much harder to eradicate, but people get to decide what happens with the schools in their neighborhood that their children go to.
I'm not sure dependency on the state is an entirely bad thing, especially if the alternative is dependency on groups inimical to the state - e.g. religious groups that fan separatism.
The medical mafia isn't really the issue here.
Basically, government provided services suffer from low quality. KVs and AIIMS are the exceptions that prove the rule. Plus they're centrally administered which does make a difference. Union govt services usually tend to be better.
The question is about doctors in PHCs, CHC, etc and teachers in locally run government schools. Even if you hire more doctors/teachers, how do you deal with high abseenteism, inflation of outcomes, etc?
You don't really need tailoring of curriculum for basic literacy/numeracy. You just need more teachers and make the ones you hired show up. And the problem with hiring more is that there's a lot of spend on salaries/pensions. How do you resolve your understaffing problem if the salary cost is blowing a hole in your budget? So better hire vocationally trained doctors (similar to RNs or PAs in the US) or teachers on a contract basis.
And the average citizen doesn't have much power because local governments don't have much budgets. Spend at local level is very low. So the power to influence is low too. And you're right. I was going through the Constituent Assembly Debates and one of the issues in favor of centralization was breaking the back of regional elites (caste, religion, tribe, etc).
The dependency on state thing is debatable. I think we can have that debate once the Indian State is strong enough to enforce its writ on those who want to exercise street vetos.
P.S: "religious groups that fan separatism" -- I see what you did there ;)
I think 'street vetos' aren't combated by fighting them with force as they happen. Modi seems to have succeeded in fixing that issue in Gujarat during his CMship without force on the streets. There's a whole ecosystem to enable the street vetos, and funding people so they don't have to hold regular jobs, and don't have to fear jails, is a big part of it. If a group of people decide they are sufficiently aggrieved and sufficiently don't care, government can't do all that much as we saw in the first Trump term. There are elected representatives who will take the side of the street veto and there's very little you can do then. Street vetos don't originate on the street.
From my experience looking at bad public schools in the bay area, the issue is not that teachers are bad or absent. It's not low salaries. Some of it is the families in the area not raising their kids right. But A LOT of it is parents not holding teachers accountable. That's literally the only difference I notice in the US. It's not that poorer parents don't value education, but they don't know or don't have enough time, resources or confidence to hold teachers accountable.
The teachers in KVs are also recruited by the government, and they also serve remote areas. There are many good govt schools too, usually in cities. The recruitment process and such is the same. But why are they absent more in some areas versus others? That could be good to study.
One of the problems here is whenever you bring up such a problem, no one bothers to talk to the people affected/responsible for their point of view, or get the data about that. Everyone already seems to know the answer - they are dishonest, they have tuition classes they spend their time on, the principal is also on the take, we are like this only.
As for medical students, there's a lot of talk about the doctor deficit in India. Someone wrote an article a while ago when the Ukraine war started, about why Indians were studying medicine in Ukraine and even other countries like Tajikistan. They did the math and found that the doctor deficit in India is the same as the number of indians studying medicine abroad. There are more people who want to be doctors, but they aren't given the chance for various reasons. If we expand the number of medical colleges, as the govt seems to be doing, it could work better for us.
I don't think salaries are a problem. We have a huge population. We have to serve them all, and it's going to cost money, and we've to figure out how to do it.
And generally, I've started to develop a different idea about absenteeism - I think our work hours and the amount we're exploited and the services we have around us are fundamentally incompatible with family life. Those who value family more than their employer will be absent more. Many of our festivals aren't even official holidays. Many of us work far away from our place of origin. There is no accommodation for much of this even in the public sector and there's even less accommodation in the private sector. If we accommodate work to go with life, I feel like absenteeism will go away by itself.
Karthik does gather data about schools. Basically, other than the KVs, Sainik Schools and Navodaya Vidyalayas run by the Central govt, others run by state govts face issues with overburdened teachers and teacher absences.
Teachers were absent as much as 60% of the time (I think, don't remember it offhand). The figure was slightly better in urban areas but not by much. That shows up in ASER's data on learning outcomes too. These absences really can't be explained by anything other than lack of enforcement. The UP govt cracked down on teacher attendance and the next 5-7 years showed an improvement in learning outcomes. Check the UP data in ASER 2024 vs ASER 2014.
With medical students the problem isn't number of doctors. You don't need MBBS degrees to serve the vast majority of ailments. A simple RN or PA type 2-3 year vocational course is sufficient. And there's data to show that MBBS and MD grads don't prefer to serve in rural areas anyway.
Hard disagree on salaries. Salaries are a HUGE problem. Basically the Centre spends about 35% (according to the latest budget) on salaries and pension alone. Many states including powerhouses like TN and Maharashtra spend 40%+ on salaries and pensions. Crucial positions (teachers, doctors, police, judges, etc) are understaffed by at least 20-30% in most cases. And this deficit extends to number of govt employees too. Ramping up the deficit in hiring at these salary levels isn't sustainable.
That's why Karthik suggests a contract based model kinda like the Agniveer one. And that's showing success in states like Telangana where it has been piloted. You give a decent starting salary, there's exposure through the government and you don't have to budget for pensions. There's simply no way to hire more govt employees at current salary levels without having the deficit go through the roof.
About absenteeism - that does apply to an extent. But you can't explain away 60% absence with that model. And that's part of the problem. If you hire teachers from urban areas and have them work in rural areas, absenteeism will be high. Instead hiring from the same communities on contract gives an incentive to turn up on time as well as keep salary budgets under check.
I have worked long enough as a civil servant to state that the biggest problem lies in honest civil servants being blocked by an eco- system which rewards inefficiency by treating apples and oranges as one
The author seems well intentioned, but to know the malaise it is perhaps more educative to read TR Raghunandan and other candid bureaucratic memoirs
Yup, I agree.
But he does address this issue. How do you resolve corruption and inefficient spend? He has worked in advising state governments on these issues through his NGO and he claims that these solutions do work in practice.
Copying response from another comment below:
He does! I'll have to verify this but he claims that what citizens perceive as "corruption" is a relatively small part of the problem. The bigger problem is inefficient spend. For instance, for every rupee in lost spend, we lose about 20 paise due to corruption and 80 paise due to inefficient spend. Of course, depending on how you look at it, you can call inefficient spend corruption too.
If a teacher refuses to show up even after being hired, is it corruption, inefficient spend or weak state capacity?
But basically, if a small amount of money is invested in data collection to make sure that correct outcomes are reported, this problem can be resolved to a great degree.
I recommend reading the chapter on data collection to get an idea of his proposals. And according to him, they do work. He has an NGO called CEGIS that advises state governments on implementing these ideas. So he has first hand experience of this.
In fact if you visit the MOSPI portal you will see how much effort the Government puts into data collection. The problem is that Deep State Western agencies don't want to acknowledge this
Yeah, the MOSPI portal does have decent data. But there are many problems. That's not only the Western agencies pointing this out.
For example, our GDP calculations are famously opaque. Our ex-CEA is saying that after 2004, the GDP figures aren't as reliable.
Even some of the outcomes of government schemes haven't been independently verifiable.
That's an exaggeration. Please see the CAG of India's figures. They are culled from basic and primary accounting records.
Interesting! Did not know this. Can you give me a link? I want to go through this and get to the bottom of it.