Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson received the 2024 Economics Nobel for their work on institutions and how their quality and richness are a fundamental driver of long-term growth. We must invest in enhancing the institutions that provide a supporting ecosystem for economic development.
Creating an ecosystem for accelerated development requires strengthening state capacity to perform its core functions including delivery of basic public services such as health, education, and social protection programmes; building organisations that can catalyse population-scale improvements; training high-quality leaders for the social sector; and enhancing strategic philanthropy.
The Centre for Effective Governance in States (CEGIS) aims to improve lives by increasing the capacity of state governments to deliver better development outcomes. Among its methods for achieving this are using better outcome data as a point of leverage in improving the quality of decision-making at the state level. It also supports state governments on Strategic Personnel Management, Strategic Budgeting, and building the state’s capacity to manage its market interfaces. The Centre for Research in Schemes and Policies (CRISP) also does significant work in strengthening government schemes and programme implementation through independent feedback from the field.
Health is a prime factor in economic development and poor air quality in Indian cities, particularly in the north, comes in the way of physical as well as economic health. The Air Pollution Action Group (A-PAG) focuses on the task of curtailing air pollution across the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It brings together ecosystem groups to make an impact on the ground and works with governments at the Centre, State, and Municipal levels to identify and eliminate sources of air pollution. Lack of physical mobility can also impair health, and Sports and Society Accelerator (SSA) aims for every child to be playing a sport and every adult leading an active life in India by 2047.
The India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS) works to strengthen social impact organisations through talent infusion and up-skilling. It has run many flagship leadership programmes that trains corporate leaders in the ways of the social sector, as well as other programmes to help people to step into board and advisory positions and women to take up more leadership roles.
Philanthropy in India is largely project-based. But if high net-worth individuals were to start giving in line with their global peers, India could generate a considerable investible corpus of Rs 60,000 to a lakh crore annually towards addressing many of the challenges impeding its growth. Accelerate Indian Philanthropy (AIP) wants to nudge philanthropy towards more systemic giving for greater impact, under the motto “Give more, give sooner, give better”. It does this by building knowledge resources to guide and inform philanthropy for effective and proven interventions at scale across different sectors and by building engaged networks of philanthropists who inspire each other.
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