<p>US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal for a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Elon Musk at its helm, reflects an enduring American preoccupation: the drive to streamline governance by dismantling layers of regulatory accumulation. Musk’s critique centres on the notion that unelected bureaucrats have created extra-constitutional rules that bloat governance and stifle innovation.</p>.<p>India’s governance challenge, however, is fundamentally different. Efficiency, typically thought as cost-cutting or time-saving, is a limited and potentially counterproductive lens for reform. When pursued without nuance, it risks undermining state capacity, where long-term investments are essential. This is further complicated by the perception of the public sector as a significant source of employment in India. As Arvind Panagariya also argues, the Indian state’s core weakness is not its size but its inability to deliver public goods and services effectively. Addressing this foundational gap is paramount.</p>.The perils of India’s forgotten Census.<p>The Indian state does not suffer from regulatory excess but from institutional frameworks that are steeped in colonial legacies. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta highlights, these legacies – marked by centralisation, opacity, and rigidity – were designed to perpetuate control, not to serve citizens. Unlike the United States, India’s governance challenge demands not reductionism but a reimagination – reforms that are rooted not in the pursuit of efficiency alone but in building state capacity to serve people with equity, responsiveness, and effectiveness.</p>.<p>Efforts such as the Right to Information Act, the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, reforms recommended by the Administrative Reforms Commission, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for “minimum government, maximum governance” have moved the needle. The repeal of 1,500+ obsolete laws in the last decade, 60+ lateral entrants into administrative services since 2018, and the digitisation of key services signal a commitment to breaking away from outdated mechanisms. However, these steps, while necessary, are insufficient to achieve the depth of change that is required to keep up with rising citizen ambitions.</p>.<p>One of the most urgent, perhaps unglamorous, tasks is rewriting the rules of business, relics of a colonial era. These rules, formal guidelines of how the government conducts its administrative functions, reinforce silos within the government and inhibit adaptability. These rules are overly hierarchical, centralised, and rooted in colonial administrative traditions that prioritise control over delivery. What’s more, in some cases, they lead to unclear responsibilities – like infrastructure projects requiring multiple overlapping approvals. There is a need to completely reimagine them – not as a mere administrative exercise but a philosophical shift towards decentralisation, clarity, and accountability.</p>.<p>Equally important is reorienting governance to prioritise outcomes over processes. Bureaucracy’s obsession with procedural fidelity often undermines real-world results. This process-driven culture has created a machinery that is slow, risk-averse, and disconnected from the needs of the citizens. Effective governance must reward measured risk-taking, encourage innovation, and hold officials accountable for tangible improvements in citizens’ lives. As Karthik Muralidharan highlights in Accelerating India’s Development, prioritising outcomes – especially in areas such as education and public health – is critical for ensuring that state capacity translates into meaningful development.</p>.<p><strong>Tech-enabled efficiency</strong></p>.<p>Technology offers an unparalleled opportunity to drive this transformation. India’s digital infrastructure, embodied in the IndiaStack platform, is a game-changer for governance. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and data analytics can enable proactive service delivery, personalised citizen engagement, and tamper-proof systems for accountability. Multiple pilots highlight the transformative potential of targeted interventions supported by robust data systems to improve state effectiveness. By leveraging these tools, India can move from reactive governance to one that anticipates and fulfills citizen needs not just efficiently but also equitably.</p>.<p>At the same time, it is essential to avoid expected pitfalls in enhancing efficiency for India. Governance effectiveness must not be conflated with austerity, which could erode state capacity in critical areas. Nor should it be equated with centralisation, which stifles innovation at the state and local levels. Additionally, replicating corporate efficiency models in public governance risks ignoring the complexity, trust, and equity considerations that are integral to democratic accountability. Effective governance must balance efficiency with inclusivity and accountability with innovation. Perhaps most importantly, as Bibek Debroy pointed out, governance challenges are not uniform across Indian states. This underscores the need for state-specific strategies in driving countrywide transformation.</p>.<p>India stands at a critical juncture, where its demographic dividend and economic potential present both unprecedented opportunities and immense challenges. According to the World Bank, sustained governance reform requires strengthening institutional capacity while fostering citizen trust and engagement. A well-conceived Department of Government Effectiveness could be the catalyst for reimagining governance – not just as an administrative reform, but as a broader moral commitment to fairness, agility, and citizen-focus, with technology as the enabler.</p>.<p>The question, therefore, is not whether India is first willing to undertake the intellectual and moral labour of rethinking governance itself. Only then can we move beyond the remnants of colonial control and craft a state that is truly aligned with the aspirations of its people. This is not merely a project of reform; it is a fundamental reimagining of the Republic itself.</p>.<p><em><strong>(The writer is a global policy expert and Country Director, Tony Blair <br>Institute For Global Change)</strong></em></p>
<p>US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal for a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Elon Musk at its helm, reflects an enduring American preoccupation: the drive to streamline governance by dismantling layers of regulatory accumulation. Musk’s critique centres on the notion that unelected bureaucrats have created extra-constitutional rules that bloat governance and stifle innovation.</p>.<p>India’s governance challenge, however, is fundamentally different. Efficiency, typically thought as cost-cutting or time-saving, is a limited and potentially counterproductive lens for reform. When pursued without nuance, it risks undermining state capacity, where long-term investments are essential. This is further complicated by the perception of the public sector as a significant source of employment in India. As Arvind Panagariya also argues, the Indian state’s core weakness is not its size but its inability to deliver public goods and services effectively. Addressing this foundational gap is paramount.</p>.The perils of India’s forgotten Census.<p>The Indian state does not suffer from regulatory excess but from institutional frameworks that are steeped in colonial legacies. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta highlights, these legacies – marked by centralisation, opacity, and rigidity – were designed to perpetuate control, not to serve citizens. Unlike the United States, India’s governance challenge demands not reductionism but a reimagination – reforms that are rooted not in the pursuit of efficiency alone but in building state capacity to serve people with equity, responsiveness, and effectiveness.</p>.<p>Efforts such as the Right to Information Act, the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, reforms recommended by the Administrative Reforms Commission, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for “minimum government, maximum governance” have moved the needle. The repeal of 1,500+ obsolete laws in the last decade, 60+ lateral entrants into administrative services since 2018, and the digitisation of key services signal a commitment to breaking away from outdated mechanisms. However, these steps, while necessary, are insufficient to achieve the depth of change that is required to keep up with rising citizen ambitions.</p>.<p>One of the most urgent, perhaps unglamorous, tasks is rewriting the rules of business, relics of a colonial era. These rules, formal guidelines of how the government conducts its administrative functions, reinforce silos within the government and inhibit adaptability. These rules are overly hierarchical, centralised, and rooted in colonial administrative traditions that prioritise control over delivery. What’s more, in some cases, they lead to unclear responsibilities – like infrastructure projects requiring multiple overlapping approvals. There is a need to completely reimagine them – not as a mere administrative exercise but a philosophical shift towards decentralisation, clarity, and accountability.</p>.<p>Equally important is reorienting governance to prioritise outcomes over processes. Bureaucracy’s obsession with procedural fidelity often undermines real-world results. This process-driven culture has created a machinery that is slow, risk-averse, and disconnected from the needs of the citizens. Effective governance must reward measured risk-taking, encourage innovation, and hold officials accountable for tangible improvements in citizens’ lives. As Karthik Muralidharan highlights in Accelerating India’s Development, prioritising outcomes – especially in areas such as education and public health – is critical for ensuring that state capacity translates into meaningful development.</p>.<p><strong>Tech-enabled efficiency</strong></p>.<p>Technology offers an unparalleled opportunity to drive this transformation. India’s digital infrastructure, embodied in the IndiaStack platform, is a game-changer for governance. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and data analytics can enable proactive service delivery, personalised citizen engagement, and tamper-proof systems for accountability. Multiple pilots highlight the transformative potential of targeted interventions supported by robust data systems to improve state effectiveness. By leveraging these tools, India can move from reactive governance to one that anticipates and fulfills citizen needs not just efficiently but also equitably.</p>.<p>At the same time, it is essential to avoid expected pitfalls in enhancing efficiency for India. Governance effectiveness must not be conflated with austerity, which could erode state capacity in critical areas. Nor should it be equated with centralisation, which stifles innovation at the state and local levels. Additionally, replicating corporate efficiency models in public governance risks ignoring the complexity, trust, and equity considerations that are integral to democratic accountability. Effective governance must balance efficiency with inclusivity and accountability with innovation. Perhaps most importantly, as Bibek Debroy pointed out, governance challenges are not uniform across Indian states. This underscores the need for state-specific strategies in driving countrywide transformation.</p>.<p>India stands at a critical juncture, where its demographic dividend and economic potential present both unprecedented opportunities and immense challenges. According to the World Bank, sustained governance reform requires strengthening institutional capacity while fostering citizen trust and engagement. A well-conceived Department of Government Effectiveness could be the catalyst for reimagining governance – not just as an administrative reform, but as a broader moral commitment to fairness, agility, and citizen-focus, with technology as the enabler.</p>.<p>The question, therefore, is not whether India is first willing to undertake the intellectual and moral labour of rethinking governance itself. Only then can we move beyond the remnants of colonial control and craft a state that is truly aligned with the aspirations of its people. This is not merely a project of reform; it is a fundamental reimagining of the Republic itself.</p>.<p><em><strong>(The writer is a global policy expert and Country Director, Tony Blair <br>Institute For Global Change)</strong></em></p>
