Policy design and implementation

The first principle

A policy is a theory: if the state does this, then that outcome will follow for these people. It can fail in two quite different ways. The theory itself may be wrong, because the problem was misread, the target group was badly chosen or the incentives point the wrong way; or the theory may be sound and still fail because the money, staff, coordination or local knowledge needed to carry it out never arrived. The two failures need different remedies, and much of what goes wrong in Indian development comes from treating one as the other, for instance by adding monitoring to a scheme whose design is flawed.

The core

The policy cycle

• Agenda setting. A problem gains public and political attention, through data, a crisis, a court order or a movement, and is placed on the government's list of things to act on.
• Formulation. Options are drafted and compared, ideally with evidence and consultation with those affected; the Pre Legislative Consultation Policy (2014) asks ministries to publish draft laws for at least thirty days of public comment.
• Adoption. The chosen option is approved by the Cabinet, legislature or competent authority, and money is allotted.
• Implementation. Ministries, states, districts and front line workers turn the decision into services, rules and spending.
• Evaluation. Results are measured against intended outcomes, and the findings feed the next round of agenda setting, which makes the cycle continuous.

Design failure and implementation failure

• Design failure occurs when the scheme is built on a wrong diagnosis, chooses the wrong instrument or target group, or creates incentives that defeat its purpose. A subsidy that encourages overuse of a scarce resource fails even when delivered perfectly.
• Implementation failure occurs when a sound scheme is weakened by delays in funds, vacancies, poor coordination, leakages or lack of local adaptation.
• Different remedies. Design failure needs redesign, based on evaluation and consultation; implementation failure needs capacity, money released on time, monitoring and accountability at the point of delivery.

Top down and bottom up

• Top down. In Implementation (1973), Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky studied a federal jobs programme in Oakland and showed that a policy depending on many agencies to agree in sequence will probably fail, because each clearance adds delay and a chance of veto. The top down view therefore stresses clear goals, few links in the chain and firm control.
• Bottom up. In Street Level Bureaucracy (1980), Michael Lipsky argued that teachers, police officers and welfare workers, working with too many cases and too few resources, use discretion every day, and their choices effectively become the policy that citizens experience.
• Synthesis. Good implementation sets clear outcomes at the top but gives front line workers the discretion, information and resources to adapt to local conditions.

Dimensions

Decisions far from information

• The problem. In much of Indian development, schemes are designed in a ministry in Delhi, funded through a state, and carried out by a village worker. The people who know the problem (the panchayat, the front line worker, the beneficiary) do not decide, and those who decide do not know the ground, so standard designs meet very different villages and problems discovered on the ground take months to reach anyone who can change the rules.
• Subsidiarity is the principle that a function should be performed by the lowest level of government able to perform it well. The Seventy third and Seventy fourth Amendments (1992) apply it through Articles 243G and 243W and the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules, which list subjects that can be devolved to panchayats and municipalities.
• The limit. Decentralisation without funds and staff only shifts blame; and some problems (pollution in a river basin, a national highway) cross local boundaries and need higher level coordination. Subsidiarity places each decision at the right level, not always the lowest.

Multi level planning in a market oriented paradigm

• The promise. Since 1991 India has moved from directive planning, where the state decides investment, to a neo liberal or market oriented paradigm, where the state sets direction and builds enablers while the market drives growth. In this model, planning at the national, state, district and village levels is expected to cut costs and remove blockages, because local plans match spending to local needs and catch problems early.
• The framework. Article 243ZD requires a District Planning Committee (DPC) in every district to consolidate panchayat and municipal plans into a draft district plan. Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP), prepared in the gram sabha since 2015 when Fourteenth Finance Commission grants began to flow directly to panchayats, are the base of the pyramid.
• NITI Aayog. On 1 January 2015 the Planning Commission was replaced by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, which does not allocate funds and works as a think tank promoting cooperative and competitive federalism. Five Year Plans ended in 2017.
• The reality. Many DPCs meet rarely or are chaired by ministers, district plans are often a compilation of scheme budgets, and tied central funds leave little room for local priorities. Multi level planning saves cost only where lower levels have untied funds, technical staff and authority.

In practice

Convergence and coordination

• PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan. Launched in October 2021, it is a geographic information system (GIS) platform built by the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo informatics (BISAG N), on which ministries such as railways, roads, ports, power and telecom plan their infrastructure on shared layers of data. An Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) oversees it, and a Network Planning Group (NPG) of ministries examines projects. The National Logistics Policy (2022) complements it by aiming to cut logistics costs.
• Why coordination with others matters. Most land, clearances and last mile connections lie with states, and much of the investment and use comes from the private sector. States have prepared their own master plans on the platform, and private developers and logistics firms need access to its data, predictable approvals and a voice in planning for the goal of seamless connectivity to be met.
• Aspirational Districts Programme. Launched by NITI Aayog in January 2018 in 112 districts, it ranks districts monthly on 49 indicators across health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skills, and basic infrastructure. It rests on convergence of schemes, collaboration among Centre, state and district officers, and competition among districts, and was extended to 500 blocks through the Aspirational Blocks Programme in 2023.

Beneficiaries and outcomes in water, sanitation and hygiene

• Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen), launched by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (now the Ministry of Jal Shakti) on 2 October 2014, built household toilets on a large scale, and all villages were declared open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019. Its second phase aims at ODF Plus: sustained use, solid and liquid waste management, and visible cleanliness.
• Jal Jeevan Mission (2019) aims at a functional tap connection for every rural household; the share of rural households with a tap connection rose from about 17 per cent in August 2019 to a large majority by 2025, according to the Ministry's dashboard.
• Segmentation by need. Outcomes for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) depend on matching the intervention to the group: women and adolescent girls need privacy and menstrual hygiene, children need school toilets and handwashing, elderly and disabled people need accessible designs, and remote or Scheduled Caste habitations need priority because they were left out earlier. Counting toilets built is an output; use, health and dignity are the outcomes.
• Behaviour change. Swachhagrahis (village motivators) and community led triggering were used because construction alone does not change habits, and independent surveys found gaps between toilets built and toilets used.

Policy contradictions

• Agriculture and groundwater. Free power for farms and assured procurement of paddy in Punjab encourage a water intensive crop in a state whose aquifers are falling. The Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act, 2009 delays transplanting to reduce pumping, but the larger incentives still point the other way.
• Energy and climate. India has committed to net zero emissions by 2070, yet coal production keeps rising to meet demand, and new mines are opened in forest areas of central India.
• Infrastructure and forests. The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 renamed the law the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam and exempted some categories of land, including land within 100 km of borders for strategic linear projects, from prior forest clearance. In 2024 the Supreme Court directed that the wide meaning of forest set out in T. N. Godavarman (1996) continue to apply meanwhile.

Issues and way forward

• Too little evaluation. The Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO) of NITI Aayog, set up in 2015, and the outcome budget, presented since 2005, give tools to judge results; linking their findings to the next allocation and to scheme redesign would make policy evidence based.
• Weak consultation. The Pre Legislative Consultation Policy is not binding and is often skipped. Making it mandatory, with a summary of comments received, would catch design flaws early.
• Coordination costs. Convergence platforms work when someone senior watches them. Reviews by the Prime Minister on the Pro Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI) platform and empowered groups of secretaries show the value of high level attention, but routine coordination should come from shared data and joint planning, not only from reviews.
• Policy coherence. Environment, energy and agriculture policies are made in separate ministries. Strategic environmental assessment of sector policies and a standing mechanism to resolve conflicts before approval would reduce contradictions.
• Capacity at the front line. Untied funds and trained staff for panchayats and districts are the condition for decisions to move closer to information.

Common confusions

• Output and outcome. An output is what the scheme produces (toilets built, tap connections); an outcome is the change in people's lives (use, health, time saved for women).
• Design failure and implementation failure. If the scheme would fail even when delivered perfectly, it is a design failure; if it would work with the resources and coordination it was promised, the failure lies in implementation.
• Decentralisation and subsidiarity. Decentralisation is the transfer of power to lower levels; subsidiarity is the principle that decides which level should hold each power.
• Planning Commission and NITI Aayog. The Planning Commission made Five Year Plans and allocated plan funds to states; NITI Aayog advises, evaluates and promotes cooperative federalism but does not allocate funds.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: policy cycle, design failure, implementation failure, street level bureaucracy, subsidiarity, multi level planning, District Planning Committee, GPDP, convergence, PM Gati Shakti, Aspirational Districts, beneficiary segmentation, output and outcome, policy coherence, evidence based policy.
• Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: "The Aspirational Districts Programme, launched in 2018 in 112 districts, ranks them monthly on 49 indicators, showing how convergence and competition can be built around outcomes rather than schemes."
  • Introduction with a scholar: "Pressman and Wildavsky showed in 1973 that every additional agency whose consent a policy needs adds delay and a chance of failure, which is why coordination is as much a design question as an administrative one."
  • Conclusion: "Policies succeed when decisions sit close to the information they need, when sectors are made to plan together, and when evaluation is allowed to change the design."
  • Conclusion: "India's development challenge is less a shortage of schemes than a gap between design and delivery, which convergence, subsidiarity and evidence can close."