Revitalizing the State: 6. The Performance of the Indian State

The performance of a state depends upon how effectively it copes with its crisis points. These crisis points can arise because of arbitrariness, excessive bureaucratizaiton, insufficient democratization, insufficient participation of the people in the management of public purpose, incapacity to cope with international expectations, etc. A revitalization strategy for a state needs to be tailor-made to its context, based on an assessment of the state’s performance in a global context. There are special challenges in revitalizing the Indian state. The Indian state is a vast, enormously differentiated, loosely coupled, development-oriented, federal democratic system. An assessment of its performance in a global context supports two contradictory propositions: that the Indian state is a disaster; and that the Indian state is one of the world’s more effective developmental states. The assessment indicates that while there is nothing to be ashamed about the performance of the Indian state after India’s independence, and there are many strengths, there are also many dark spots that need to be tackled, and several options need to be considered for considered for removing these dark spots.