1Accelerating India’s Development is a timely and substantial contribution to the debate on how India can transform its economic potential into inclusive development. Drawing on more than two decades of empirical work on education, social protection, and public finance, Muralidharan advances a clear thesis: India’s binding constraint is less a shortage of ideas or resources than weak state capacity. The book offers both a granular diagnosis of this “state capacity crisis” and a pragmatic roadmap for reform. This review focuses on that research-to-policy bridge while also highlighting the political and distributional challenges that may complicate implementation.

2The book is organised into four sections. The first section focuses on the two key actors of the state – politicians and bureaucrats – explaining the systemic constraints and misaligned incentives, such as the “politicians’ predicament” and “bureaucracy’s burden,” that shape policy trajectories at the state level. The second section details how weaknesses in data systems, personnel management, public finance, and intergovernmental relations combine to produce what the author describes as “overburdened and under-resourced” public systems. A striking example is the vast variation in public employment across states: while Tamil Nadu employs nearly 13 public employees per 1,000 people, Bihar manages with fewer than three per 1,000. Such disparities, Muralidharan argues, reflect institutional stagnation and the politicisation of core governance functions.

3In the third section, the book contends that while India’s development performance has been respectable by global standards, the country could do far better if it improved state effectiveness. Governance reform is framed as a high-return investment: relatively modest, well-targeted changes – such as hiring more judges to ease judicial backlogs, improving forensic capacity to support policing, or leveraging digital infrastructure to streamline welfare delivery – could generate outsized gains. These themes are developed through sectoral chapters on education, health, justice, and public safety, which combine empirical evidence with detailed policy playbooks.

4The final section introduces a “3i framework” of ideas, interests, and institutions to explain why some reforms take root while others stall. Policy trajectories, in this view, depend on aligning decision-makers’ incentives with public welfare and embedding those incentives in robust, inclusive institutions at both national and state levels. These chapters read almost like a manual for reform-minded policymakers and senior administrators, offering sector-specific roadmaps that confront administrative and political constraints rather than assuming them away.

5Three strengths stand out. First, the synthesis of academic research with actionable policy guidance bridges the gap between scholarship and practice. The characterisation of governance reform as a “10x return on investment opportunity” is particularly effective in a political environment that often rewards visible projects over less visible institutional change. Second, the prose is clear and accessible, and the extensive use of real‑world examples – such as collaboration with state governments to streamline payments to farmers – makes the arguments concrete. This accessibility means that the book will speak not only to academics and policy researchers, but also to policymakers, senior civil servants, and graduate and advanced undergraduate students in public policy, economics, and political science. Third, the political‑economy lens is refreshingly pragmatic. Rather than demonising politicians, the book acknowledges electoral pressures that drive short‑termism and suggests reforms that align improved governance with political returns. The focus on state‑level governance, in turn, underscores an often‑neglected feature of India’s constitutional architecture: states deliver the bulk of essential services, including education and health.

6At the same time, several limitations merit attention. The optimistic view of evidence‑based policymaking may understate the depth of resistance within bureaucratic and political structures. Performance‑linked pay for teachers, for instance, is attractive in theory but politically contentious in contexts with strong unions and weak accountability mechanisms. The analysis could also probe more deeply into the coordination challenges across the Union government, states, and local bodies, particularly in polarised political settings. While the case for greater fiscal decentralisation is persuasive, the severe capacity constraints of many urban local bodies and rural panchayats receive relatively less sustained treatment. Finally, the focus on governance reform – while crucial – risks underplaying other structural determinants of development outcomes. Socio‑economic inequalities and environmental degradation appear more as a background condition than as a cross‑cutting constraint that shape what state capacity can achieve and for whom.

7Two conceptual contributions are especially noteworthy in the book. The first is the insistence on outcomes rather than inputs as the yardstick on performance. Whether in education or health, the case for measuring what matters – and designing incentives, managerial practices, and information systems accordingly – runs throughout the book. The second is a managerial sensibility about scale. Many of the proposals are not dramatic “big‑bang reforms,” but rather, sequences of feasible improvements that compound over time: more rational personnel deployment, simple but robust management information systems, time‑use audits for frontline staff, a predictable flow of funds, and targeted capacity‑building for mid‑level managers. These reforms are less glamorous than launching new schemes, but they are plausibly more transformative in the long run.

8By foregrounding the “plumbing” of the state – staffing, data, public finance, and incentives – the book makes a powerful case that building state capability is India’s highest-return development investment. For readers of the International Review of Public Policy journal, it also opens up useful comparative questions. Experiences from other large federal democracies, such as Brazil’s municipal health systems or the United States’ experiments with performance management and open data, suggest both the promise and the limitations of technocratic reforms when they confront entrenched political interests. Similarly, the Indian cases discussed here show how digital technologies can reduce leakage and expand coverage, but they also raise concerns about exclusion for those without connectivity or documentation, and about the need for stronger privacy and data-governance frameworks. While the book concludes with a dedicated chapter on the role of civil-society organisations and social coalitions, further exploration of specific case studies of co-production at the municipal level could have even more deeply exemplified how reforms stick at the frontline.

9Overall, Accelerating India’s Development is a rigorous, hopeful, and policy-relevant contribution to debates on state capacity and development. It will reward policymakers looking for concrete levers of reform, academics and researchers seeking to connect micro-evidence with system-level change, and students trying to make sense of India’s governance challenges. The agenda it outlines is ambitious, and implementation will be demanding, but the book demonstrates that incremental, well-sequenced changes to the institutions and incentives of the state can generate large and widespread gains.