Our guest for this episode has just authored one of the most highly acclaimed books on India - “Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap For Effective Governance”. In this fascinating one hour conversation, Karthik gives us an introduction to  the key messages of his book - the idea that the government can do more by improving the quality of its spending, or the 'pipes of public service delivery' as he calls it, instead of focusing on the share of budget spent on key sectors, and by removing the frictions that plague Indian industry and hamper productivity, rather than offering all kinds of subsidies and incentives to a few marquee investors.

He also airs his worry that the book may give the impression that he’s a statist since most chapters talk about enhancing state capacity to accelerate growth. However, in this conversation with Rahul Ahluwalia, founder-director at the Foundation for Economic Development (FED), Muralidharan explains that “by focusing on what I want the government to do, I'm sending a strong implicit message to what it should not do.”  

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