Akshay Mangla

INTRODUCTION Gender, race, and other social markers strongly predict citizens’ encounters with bureaucracies, reflected in unequal treatment, access to services, and welfare (Grossman and Slough Reference Grossman and Slough2022; Park Reference Park2022). What, given these persistent inequalities, can improve the responsiveness of public agencies to citizens that they have long neglected or excluded?

“Will it work on the ground? What do you think?” is a question any senior bureaucrat designing a policy intervention should ask field-level stakeholders. Researchers have often pointed out that in developing countries institutions are too weak to implement policies effectively. India is a diverse country with wide variations in its implementation of policies, across not only geography but also policy areas.

‘In Making Bureaucracy Work, Mangla delves deeply into the local implementation of education policy in some of India’s poorest states to ask when governments are able to deliver social services to their citizens and, ultimately, to improve social outcomes. His novel answer to this vitally important question focuses on how bureaucratic norms, which vary markedly across different localities, drive better implementation of government education policies.