In Service Of The Republic': The Art And

Some of the most influential ideas and concepts have been revealed to me through the book “In Service of Republic” by Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah. It has insights on how a state acts as a coercive agent and hence the challenge is how to channel that coercion into fair play and justice. The very aim of the state is to improve the supply of public goods without wasting valuable resources and thus how can we build state capacity. By applying the concepts to actual problems, the book Kelkar & Shah discuss the Delhi Air pollution problem and how a Coasean solution doesn’t fit. The book helps learn frameworks through which possibility of market failure is analyzed. It introduces three steps to policy thinking, first, is there a market failure, second, whether government intervention addressed the market failure and third, whether state has the capacity to implement. In extremely optimistic discussion on Public Choice theory, it tells us that the behavior of the politicians and Bureaucrat is not immutable and when we change the rules, incentives change. Book also built further on Lant pritchett and michael woolcock’s work on how questions of state capacity can be classified into easy and hard. Kelkar and shah added two more dimensions to their work, first, when stakes are high it becomes more difficult to manage and incentivize the civil servants to work. So when tax rates / fines are high, arbitrary power of investigation, raid or punish, the functionaries who wield these power are going to become law into themselves and it is very difficult to rein them in. Other dimension is secrecy – less transparency means less accountability, and less accountability means less performance/ capability.

The book is a gem for those enthusiasts who intend to gain a deep and thorough knowledge of state functioning and policy formation

An interesting book with many great ideas and different perspectives . However they keep referring to “ enlightenment values” and look at the West as the source of all that is great to an extreme extent . The same so- called enlightenment values led to colonialism, slavery, two world wars , global warming, massive economic disparities although it did lead to unprecedented prosperity for a narrow section of society . in any case many of these so- called enlightenment values form part of our own Dharmic values without the toxicity and self centeredness of the “enlightenment” and these two gentlemen would would doWell to look at the treasures in our own backyard which we have abandoned and are now seeking to reimport from the West.

Awesome👍👏👏😊A play book on how to look at public policy in its entirety!A mudt read... Although it's 4yr old since it was 1st published. 🙏

Well written and comprehensive tell tale on what went wrong with India's Policy making. Writers give enogh background and examples. A good read..

In these polarised times, when the scope for debate has shrunk to a great, this books serves its purchase incredibly well.

Kelkar and Shah the name is enoughTwo eminent personalities who have done golden works in the feild of economics and government policy making.They show you the real aspects and truths about our indian economy in a very tremendous manner.And penguin publication never let you down in terms of build quality of the book, binding, pages & printing.

I'm too small to critique this work. This book should, perhaps, be made compulsory for politicians who wish to hold any office of profit & everyone in civil service!