Learning from East Asia, India must reform its district administration with performance, accountability, and vision to achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat, points out Deepak Mishra.
"Can you arrange a study tour to Gujarat to visit the Jamnagar refinery and meet Chief Minister Modi?" asked Trinh Van Chien, chairperson of the People's Committee of Thanh Hoa province in Vietnam.
It was a winter morning in 2012. Mr Chien headed the province's executive arm, serving a population comparable to that of an average Indian district.
In function and responsibility, his role closely resembled that of a district magistrate in India.
I was working for the World Bank and was there to explore whether the Bank should lend to Thanh Hoaa.
What I witnessed in Thanh Hoaa left a lasting impression. Mr Chien rattled off statistics on provincial gross domestic product, investment, exports, employment, and budgets with the fluency of an investment banker.
He knew exactly which firms had created how many jobs or attracted how much investment.
He regaled us with global insights gained through study tours to dozens of countries.
He had done his homework on Gujarat too.
With the Nghi Son oil refinery about to be built in Thanh Hoaa, he wanted to study the Jamnagar refinery and was aware of Narendra Modi's success -- at a time when many Indians seemed oblivious to the latter's achievement.
In Vietnam -- as in many East Asian countries, from Japan to China -- officials like Mr Chien are a key ingredient in their nations' success.
Even bureaucrats operating in remote and poor provinces possess a strong grasp of global megatrends, an intimate knowledge of the local economy, and an unbounded passion for progress and prosperity.
They operate like chief executive officers -- setting direction, building and leading teams, ensuring execution and accountability, and interacting constantly with citizens and industry.
Inspiration without perspiration
Contrast that with the Indian context. Our civil servants, at the time of their entry, are among the smartest and brightest anywhere.
Yet many DMs lack the kind of economic fluency their East Asian counterparts display.
Forget higher-order goals like setting a vision or building teams; many have limited understanding of the economic challenges and opportunities facing their district, and few can authoritatively cite district-level macro statistics.
It's not their fault. We recruit the finest, but then drown them in sprawling mandates, indulge them with the trappings of power and protocol, fail to measure or reward performance, and give them neither the autonomy nor the tools to operate effectively.
Harsh as it sounds, much of our district-level administration still functions as it did under the British Raj.
Inspiration from Delhi, without perspiration on the ground, will not deliver gleaming cities, first-class infrastructure, globally competitive manufacturing, millions of jobs, or 8 per cent growth -- all prerequisites for a Viksit Bharat.
Reforming with PrIDE
Given our federal structure, any change in the bureaucracy has to be a collaborative effort between New Delhi and the state capitals.
Also, a full restructuring of the civil service, even if desirable, is a non-starter.
Keeping these constraints in mind, and assuming the support of the political leadership, here are a few pragmatic steps -- encapsulated in the word 'PrIDE' -- that can make frontline administration more productive and accountable.
Prioritise: Replace colonial-era titles (district collector/magistrate/commissioner) with contemporary labels (district chief executive officer, D-CEO).
Change their primary mandate from maintaining law and order to the rapid development of their district.
Hold the D-CEO and the top 50 senior district officers jointly accountable for the key pillars of progress -- growth, jobs, and service delivery -- which they can influence through effective implementation of programmes and projects, as well as by initiating new initiatives.
Establish 10 to 12 district development indicators (DDIs) to measure improvement across each pillar, and track them annually through an independent agency.
Incentivise: Ideally, seniority- and time-bound promotions should give way to performance-based progression, but that may be too disruptive.
Instead, create an incentive system that disburses a small part of the state's annual budget (less than 2 per cent) to districts as block grants based on changes in DDIs, treating the latter as KPIs (key performance indicators) for the district's senior administration.
The exclusive focus must be on outcomes, not inputs like meetings chaired, hours worked, or VIPs attended.
Decentralise: Allow operational flexibility to senior officers in district matters and enable them to work directly with the chief secretary's office --assisted by a district support team -- to solve problems that directly affect the district's development.
Authorise the DMs to spend incentive funds (block grants) as they deem most appropriate for the district, in consultation with local politicians.
Empathise: Liberate senior district officers from the drudgery of handling personal requests of local members of Parliament/members of the legislative assembly, protocols and event management, election duty, court appearances, and other hyper-micro tasks that currently consume around a third of their office hours.
Hold local politicians to account for interference, and encourage VIPs not to consume scarce human capital by insisting on excessive protocols and practices.
Closing the loop
As Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi was a relentless learner -- proactively seeking ideas, listening to experts, and adapting global best practices to his state's needs.
He inspired peers abroad: Mr Chien's team toured Jamnagar in 2013, though they couldn't meet Mr Modi, who by then had hit the national campaign trail.
Now, as prime minister, he can close the loop by instilling East Asian rigour into a mission-driven bureaucracy -- the essential precondition for a Viksit Bharat.
Deepak Mishra is the former director and chief executive of ICRIER.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
© 2025