Karthik Muralidharan Examines the State of the Indian State

Today my guest is Karthik Muralidharan. He is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the recent book Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance.” We talked about the lacking state capacity in India, about improving the quality of public expenditure, fiscal federalism, methods to improve the hiring process for government, better ways of staffing and using the Indian bureaucracy, randomized control trials and development and much more. 

Recorded May 15th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Connect with Ideas of India

Follow us on X

Follow Shruti on X

Follow Karthik on X

Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro (00:07:46) - Quality of Public Education (00:17:59) - Decentralization vs. Federalism (00:31:58) - Welfare Expenditure (00:41:30) - Personnel for the Indian State (01:09:08) - Better Approach for Skilling (01:17:26) - Empanelment (01:34:32) - The Backdrop of the Field of Economics (01:56:52) - Outro