Cabinet secretary TV Somanathan recently sent a note to every secretary to the Government of India, warning against settling into “a beaten track.” Would an officer, looking back at the end of a career, find “30 years’ of experience” or “one year’s experience repeated 30 times”?

Somanathan’s diagnosis is spot on. But the cure he prescribes, urging officers to take more care with the “small things,” treats this as a question of individual mindset.

Public management experts have time and again emphasised that motivations in jobs have a direct bearing on people’s performance and the effort they invest in their work. However, current administrative rules and management structures seem rather lacking when it comes to motivating the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to prioritise performance and substantive reforms over mere compliance. The officers are selected through a rigorous process. Yet, ironically, they fail to deliver essential public services such as health, education and justice. For example, while India has achieved a 95% gross enrolment ratio (GER) in primary schools, learning outcomes are extremely poor, with only 49% of grade 5 students able to read a grade 2-level text (ASER 2024). This gap underlines the bureaucratic........

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