Friday, February 14, 2025
2:00pm - 4:00pm EST
McKinney Conference Rm, 111 Thayer St
Q&A and Reception with Yamini Aiyar to Follow
Commentators:
Susan Moffitt, Brown University
Emmerich Davies, Brown University
What will it take to build high-performing, purpose-oriented public sector organizations in India?
The voices of India’s frontline bureaucrats—teachers, health workers, district and block level administrators - charged with delivering a vast array of public services to citizens—are dismissed all too quickly. Public debates on the Indian state generally view them as corrupt, apathetic, incompetent and in urgent need of tighter monitoring and discipling. But is there another way to view their role, and thus reframe approaches to the challenge of building high-performing public sector organisations and improving State capacity in India?
To answer this question, Aiyar examines an ambitious effort to improve the quality of government schools, particularly their ability to equip students with foundational literacy and numeracy, in the city state of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. By training her focus on the voices at the frontlines of the public school system, she captures the complex ways in which bureaucratic hierarchies, processes and belief systems shape state capacity. The culture these create, determine how public sector organisations resist, distort and eventually adopt reform ideas and actions aimed at improving performance.
Building state capacity and infusing a sense of public purpose within state organisations, as Delhi’s schools teach us, is about nurturing rather than disciplining the frontlines. It is about breaking down sites of resistance by empowering the frontlines with agency and exposing them to the possibilities of change. Understanding, engaging and supporting the frontlines of the State, this book argues, lies at the heart of the challenge of building state capacity.
Yamini Aiyar is currently Senior Visiting Fellow, Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and Watson Institute, Brown University. She was the President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research, a leading multidisciplinary think tank in New Delhi from 2017-2024. Yamini's work sits at the intersection of research and policy practice. During her tenure she spearheaded the establishment of two important new research initiatives within CPR on State capacity and Politics. Prior to becoming President she set up the Accountability Initiative at CPR known for its work on governance, social accountability and expenditure tracking in social Policy. Yamini's research interests span the fields of contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, federalism and India's political economy. Yamini sits on a number of boards and advisory committees of research centers and non-profits. Her recent policy commitments include: Advisory Committee, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; Member, United Nations Committee of the Experts on Public Administration; Council Member, United Nations University, Member; Chief Minister’s Rajasthan Economic Transformation Advisory Council (2022-2023); Member, Expert Group to Recommend Medium - Long Term Post Covid Strategy for Punjab, Government of Punjab (2021-22); General Body Member, Delhi Board of School Education, Government of Delhi; Advisory Board, Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Yamini has published widely both in academic and current affairs journals and newspapers including the Economist, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Indian Express, The Hindu. She has a regular column in the Hindustan Times and Deccan Herald, two leading mainstream newspapers in India. Her forthcoming book, "Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi Schools" will be published in October 2024 by Oxford University Press.