CEGIS Snapshot 2023-2024

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Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

As we complete five years of CEGIS’ existence, it

gives me great pleasure to share my reflections

on the journey so far and our plans and goals for

the coming years.

As we take stock of India in our 75th year

as a Sovereign Republic, we have a lot to be

proud of including being the world’s largest

democracy and one of its fastest growing

economies. Yet, one of the biggest constraints

to accelerating India’s development is the

weak delivery of essential public services like

education, health, child development, rural

and urban civic amenities, safety, and justice.

Further, a key insight from years of research,

is that weak public service delivery in India is

not just due to inadequate spending (as often

posited), but largely due to the poor translation

of spending into outcomes. This low quality

of public spending, in turn, reflects chronic

underinvestment in our public systems of

governance to deliver better development

outcomes at any given level of spending.

In 2019, I embarked upon two projects to reflect

these insights. The first was to synthesise years

of research and practical experience into a

book that aimed to provide both a conceptual

and practical roadmap for governance reforms

to strengthen India’s public systems, and

government effectiveness. The second was to

set up an organisation that could help translate

these ideas into reality by supporting state

governments who were keen on implementing

such reforms in doing so, which was the main

goal for building CEGIS.

My original plan was to do these in sequence,

but the support of Ashish Dhawan along with

his shared conviction on the importance of this

mission enabled CEGIS to be built alongside the

writing of the book. The roadmap from the book

- “Accelerating India’s Development” which

was released in March 2024, informs CEGIS’

Theory of Change (TOC) for building effective

public systems by strengthening four key

systemic components of state capacity: outcome

MESSAGE FROM THE CO-FOUNDER

CEGIS: CONTRIBUTING

TO ACCELERATING

INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

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