India’s Achilles' Heel: Failure to Deliver Public Services

Featuring
Ajay Chhibber
Former head of India’s Independent Evaluation Organization

Host
Alan Gelb
Senior Fellow
Center for Global Development

India's inability to deliver public services remains its Achilles’ heel. Without a solution to this critical weakness, India's aspiration to be a global economic power will remain unrealized. Why is this problem so particularly acute in India? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programs, weak administration, and over-centralization, or is it a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action?

What does the empirical evidence tell us? What are the examples of successful experiments within India of effective service delivery and what lessons can be drawn from these? What can India learn from other countries? Ajay Chhibber will draw on these questions to explore directions for change so that India can deliver.