Devesh Kapur - Rethinking Public Institutions in India

RETHINKING PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IN INDIA

RETHINKING PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IN INDIA

edited by

Devesh Kapur

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

and

Milan Vaishnav

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CONTENTS

Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Milan Vaishnav

James Manor

M.R. Madhavan

Madhav Khosla and Ananth Padmanabhan

Errol DSouza

Nirvikar Singh

Navroz K. Dubash

R. Sridharan

Amitabh Mukhopadhyay

K.P. Krishnan and T.V. Somanathan

E. Sridharan and Milan Vaishnav

T.R. Raghunandan

Tables

Figures

No edited volume is possible without the help of a large cast of characters. As the editors, we would like, first and foremost, to thank all of the contributors to the book. When we first set out to re-examine many of the issues first raised in the 2005 volume Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design, edited by two of us (Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta), we reached out to the best scholars and practitioners we could think of who had a unique grasp of the workings of the Indian state. We were honoured and delighted thatto a personthey agreed to contribute their insights.

We are grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for hosting a four-day book workshop at the Bellagio Center in July 2013, where we had a chance to discuss initial drafts of the chapters included here. We would like to thank Rob Garris and Joel Santana at Rockefeller for making the workshop possible and Laura Podio in Bellagio for her bountiful hospitality. We would also like to thank the Think Tank Initiative of Canadas International Development Research Centre (IDRC) for additional support. David Malone, IDRCs former president, was extremely supportive of the project. Milan Vaishnav is also grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its generous support of a research project on Indias state capacity.

The Bellagio conference was a joint effort of four institutions: the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States of America, the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, United States of America, and the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), New Delhi, India. We owe E. Sridharan, S.D. Gosain, and Ruchika Ahuja of UPIASI our gratitude for their tireless help in organizing and managing the conference logistics. Juliana Di Giustini of CASI deserves special thanks for making the conference such a success; her good cheer, attention to detail, and buon Italiano were indispensible. At Bellagio, we had the good fortune of learning from several experts who shared their insights and experience working in and studying India for many decades. Rajiv Lall, Pradnya Saravade, and Ronen Sen graciously lent their time, as did Marshall Bouton, who also serves on CASIs International Advisory Board.

When the time came to prepare the manuscript for publication, Saksham Khosla provided excellent editorial assistance. Aidan Milliff provided many useful inputs during the final stages of the editing process. The team at Oxford University Press in New Delhi was extremely enthusiastic about the project from the start. It has been a pleasure working with them on every aspect of the book. We also benefited enormously from the detailed comments of two anonymous reviewers, whose suggestions greatly improved the final manuscript. Ananth Padmanabhan was a great help in carrying out the initial formatting of the chapters. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the special contribution made by Madhav Khosla, who went out of his way to make sure that this project was a success. We are also grateful that Madhav and Ananth agreed, at a late date, to jointly author the chapter on the Supreme Court.

Last, but certainly not least, we would like to extend a special thanks to our colleagues, friends, and families for their unending support.

Devesh Kapur

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Milan Vaishnav

February 2017