Lessons in state capacity from Delhi's schools

What will it take to build high-performing, purpose-oriented public systems in India? In answering this question, it is all too common to dismiss the voices of India’s army of frontline officers charged with running schools and health centres and delivering the vast array of public services to citizens. Weak state capacity is a well-recognized reality that has contributed to the persistent poor quality of public services (poor learning outcomes, broken health care, gaps in the provision of water, sanitation, law and order) in India. In public debates on the Indian state, the frontline is seen as the problem. This book pushes back on this dominant discourse by training an empathetic ear to the voices of the frontlines of the Indian State. It does so through a thick descriptive account of an ambitious effort to improve the quality of Government schools, specifically its ability to equip students with basic foundational literacy and numeracy, in the city-state of Delhi. It documents the trials and tribulations of teachers, heads of schools, bureaucrats, and reformers as they struggled to implement reforms. In doing so, it offers new insights into what it takes to build state capacity and embed reform ideas into the public system. In doing so, this book makes the case for reframing the debate on state capacity to focus on the centrality of organizational culture, professional identity, and aligning management practices with mission oriented purpose as the critical ingredients of building state capacity and entrenching a learning-oriented approach in the education system.


https://academic.oup.com/book/58819