 I think we'll get started sorry for the sorry for the late start here for those who've been waiting if it's a sign maybe of things to come this group won't keep their mouth shut so I'm Mill Invasion of I'm a senior fellow here at the Carnegie Endowment nice to see so many friends here this afternoon I want to welcome all of you and welcome our special guests who are in the first row who you'll be hearing from in a short while we're here to commemorate the launch of a new book this very brightly colored tome rethinking public institutions in India which was just published by Oxford University Press I had the good fortune of serving as one of the co-editors along with my colleagues the Veshkapoor and Pratap Anumata the origins of this particular book actually date back to an earlier book that the Vesh and Pratap co-edited in 2005 called public institutions in India that book much like this one tries to understand the nature of the Indian state amid you know the sort of sweeping changes that are taking place in the Indian landscape in terms of foreign policy in terms of economics politically and in terms of its sort of the social change routine especially in the last quarter century or so in 2013 the Vesh, Pratap and I had a conversation when we first sort of met to discuss this idea of maybe we should revisit some of the themes in this book sort of a decade a decade on partly I think is as a reaction to the the intensifying churn that was taking place in India so you know the growth of civil society the shift brought on by liberalization which reduced the state's role in production but increased its regulatory role a more decentralized politics in which states came to the fore in terms of sort of day-to-day governance which reduced the powers that New Delhi had once prized so this book is not merely an updating it's it's a brand-new book with all new contributions and it brings together some of the leading experts in India or who work on India to evaluate the state of governance as it stands today each chapter is an examination of a different core federal institution ranging from parliament to the Supreme Court to the election commission of India the Reserve Bank of India if the book imparts any wisdom at all I think my co-editors will agree it's really a testament not to us but to the various authors who've contributed their expertise and in time to really dig deep in each one of these institutions and although they're not here today I want to recognize them them all publicly very quickly the book tries to understand four types or four clusters of institutions institutions of oversight and restraint so this is the sort of premier institution the executive suit excuse me the parliament the presidency in the Supreme Court economic institutions namely the Reserve Bank of India and the different expenditure organizations like finance commission the airswall planning commission and regulatory institutions the third cluster are the accountability institutions so things like the Comptroller and Auditor General the central bureau of investigation central vigilance commission these have gained I think in prominence in notoriety in recent years and last but not least the institutions that deal with implementation so the civil services the election commission and the local government institutions which have have come up since the passage of the 73rd and 74th amendments in the 1990s each chapter is guided by sort of three central questions how does the institution in question manage human capital how do they staff recruit nurture talent what are the internal organizational features particular to that institution that motivate or do not motivate good performance and and last but not least how does this institution interact with other institutions right I mean all of these are kind of embedded in a in a broader institutional context and I don't want to steal anyone's thunder but I think you know the analysis that that's in the book throws up a lot of paradoxes I'll just mention a couple one is that you know the Indian state is highly understaffed in personnel terms at the same time that it's highly over bureaucratized in procedural terms it can manage large complex tasks like holding an election for 850 million people conducting you know a mammoth census you know launching a mission to Mars while it struggles to do seemingly mundane things like deliver basic health education water sanitation it continues to be saddled by colonial era institutions at a time when the old colonial master has revamped its own institutions probably several times over so I think each of these paradoxes will touch upon in the discussion to come but needless to say there's I think there's a lot to chew on chew on in this book so the way things will work is all invite first Prathap and then the Vesh to give a few remarks in different aspects of the book and then invite Joel and May 3 to join us and have a bit of a conversation and back and forth and then we'll end with audience Q&A and I hope all of you can stay after this event we'll move downstairs and we'll have books for sale book signing a little reception so so please do try to stay for that let me just say a word about the my fellow panelists starting with Prathap who really needs no introduction but he is the president and CEO of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi I'm sure most people in this room read his writing regularly in the Indian Express one can say without any exaggeration that Prathap is today's today India's foremost I think public intellectual I don't think that's an exaggeration to say that I also have to embarrass him a little bit because last week the news came out that Prathap has just been named as the new vice chancellor of Ashoka University so if you'll join me in congratulating him which which is a is a huge and very important distinction next is the Vesh Kapoor who's the director of CASI the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor of political science he is the author editor of not one not two but three books in the last 12 months some of you may have been here in December when the Vesh came to talk about his book on Indian Americans called the other 1% May 3rd Abordia Das is the global lead for social inclusion at the World Bank she was previously a member of the Indian administrative service so is going to speak about this institution both as an insider as well as somebody who studied from the outside I just want to make a plug for a recent report that she co-authored with her colleague to the World Bank on the interesting outlier of Himantra Pradesh a state in northern India called scaling the height social inclusion sustainable development Himantra Pradesh one of the things the book doesn't really do is delve into Indian states so if you want to learn more about that please do read her work last but not least we have Joel Hellman who's the dean of the Walsh School of Foreign Service down the road at Georgetown University and the distinct distinguished professor in the practice of development he joined SFS after a 15-year career at the World Bank most recently as the bank's chief institutional economist he served in a number of important countries not least India where he was the the governance manager but gonna rely on Joel I think to to bring some international comparative context to the discussion today without further ado I'll hand things over to Pratap. Good evening it's a great privilege to be here and thank you most of all Milan for occasionally embarrassing all of us but also being such a force of nature in India studies now. What I'll do in the next few four minutes is just try and talk a little bit about the broad kind of context of social changes in the last 8 to 10 years against which the study of institutions is set as Milan mentioned we did a book more than a decade ago public institutions in India and when we were thinking about sort of rethinking public institutions one of the questions we had in our mind was okay so what's changed about India broadly apart from in a sense you know the issues of internal design and recruitment and so forth that Milan talked about and broadly I think it's fair to say that if one looked at let's say the period you know maybe 2002, 2013, 2014 let's say 2014 kind of action of the Modi government as a kind of marker there was a sense that Indian institutions are now going to be embedded in a political society which is clamoring for a change in the direction of our institutions along certain dimensions and I'll just very quickly sort of list them out. The first and first most important perhaps was a change from a culture of institutional secrecy to a culture of institutional transparency which has used ramifications for how institutions actually function. The right to information act was you know that in itself was kind of one as it were element of that general direction that institutions now have to operate in a context of greater transparency but it's not just the right to information act in fact the asymmetries of information between state and civil society many people thought were actually being redressed in favor of civil society so that many years ago the state did not tell you that something was happening nobody told you that you know something was happening so what did it mean for institutions to function in a context where both normatively and sociologically this is this kind of great push towards a state founded on relative secrecy to a state that's actually trying to institutionalize a regime of transparency and what's the politics around it. The second big change that happened sort of around this time which is related to the first was that all states in a sense exercise a great deal of discretionary power and one of the things the chapters do a lot of is trying to kind of understand what is the balance between sort of rules and discretion in design of institutions right but partly as a result of civil society movements anti-corruption movements there was a big clamor to say okay yes the state can exercise discretion and you obviously can't replace the state with robots so in that sense there will always be discretionary power vested in the state but what are the forms of public reasoning and accountability that are appropriate to the exercise of discretionary power and if you think of for example economic governance you know allocation of land minerals natural resources all those kinds of things around which state exercise discretion power there was sense that they need to be governed by new norms now not just sort of as it were rules so that was the again the second normative direction with a sort of sociological kind of movement behind it. The third big debate was about centralization and decentralization which of course still an ongoing one and I think one of the interesting challenges is while arguably there has been a bit more fiscal and administrative decentralization we are now entering a new era of political centralization and one of the I think interesting questions is what is the dialectical relationship between political centralization administrative centralization financial centralization they don't always as it would go in the same direction so you know that's you know that was in the sense the third sort of big kind of you know direction of social change. The fourth which we don't touch upon in the book but I think it is worth thinking about at this moment was that in a sense the book came out just at the moment where that grand era of coalition politics in India came to an end and I think although we were conscious of it I don't think it's reflected as much in the book this interesting question of to what extent does the broader fragmentation of power in the kind of political system affect the functioning of institutions and I think as one you know what one might say a little bit controversially but if one thinks of the kind of this moment in global democracy I think one of the interesting challenges is going to be is to what extent are the so-called autonomous institutions in the state the courts for example one very prominent institution going to be able to withstand the greater centralization of political power that you're actually going to sort of witness I mean Indian democracy has done remarkably well in some respects over the last six decades but I think we are entering a moment where I think the relationship between concentrated electoral power and the functioning of institutions is in a sense going to be you know sort of tested you know tested again in very sort of severe ways so you know these broad changes in a sense I think to my mind both in a sense captured in part what was a kind of clamor from this kind of civil society over the last decade or so but also signaled a certain kind of normative direction that institutions actually needed to take in terms of how they can see their own role in society in the forms of accountability that they are actually going to be subject to and in part the book sort of institution by institution sort of tries to see you know how much down the spot Indian institutions have gone and as as the story of Indian democracy you know you know barely the first chapter has been written I leave it to the wish to sort of talk about a couple of other issues in the book thank you all like for being here what I'll do is to raise a few questions that I think are important for how effective for public institutions are but we which we did not which we were not able to address in this book and hopefully that that will provide us with some food for thought in our discussions one is a core question of how personnel are are are selected into public institutions you know are you getting the right person for the right job and and in the Indian case actually the Constitution was was very forward-looking it created a constitutional body called UPSC the Union Public Service Commission which conducts all the exams for the civil services etc but we actually have no good way of evaluating whether the type of exams that they do is appropriate for the types of jobs for which people are being recruited for so if you recruit someone for the Indian Forest Service exam actually able to tell this this guy actually love love nature or not you know you might love nature because you can cut the wood and sell the wood but does he actually care for nature right that's the sort of thing we don't know how these exams really are they selecting for the right variables second thing which is a big gap in this book we don't at all have any coverage of the security institutions military the paramilitary and the police the single largest increase in personnel of the Indian state in the last decade has been actually for the paramilitary forces exactly what that means what is happening all of that we actually don't cover that third is you know in India as a sort of millionaire grace the actual implementation of public programs is at the state level the center designs policies comes up with the funds but the implementation is at the state level and as we know about Indian the Indian state it is relatively better at policy formulation it's not very good at implementation and the implementation is done by state level agencies and that is something again it's not covered in the book we are looking at only federal institutions not subnational institutions and you could argue that's really where the rubber hits the road when it comes to implementation I think thing is which which you know Pratap raise is the relationship of public institutions with society at large one of the things about the Indian state now it is much more socially representative of society than in the past that extent it's more embedded in society which you could argue is a much is a sort of a good thing but what that also means is that the autonomy of the state from society which also matters for effectiveness might being lost so there is always this tension between sort of embeddedness and autonomy of the state and how that balance is changing and what its its implications might be are something which we don't really engage very fully and so and so you know relatedly Pratap and I just had a volume on higher education in India and you know that story is not a very happy story and of course when you think of all the people who inhabit the state what is the sort of cognitive processes in their training in the earlier years before they join that really shapes their worldviews when they join the government service last is you know and I think Joel will sort of address this what are the yardsticks that we use to judge and effectiveness of the state so when we say the Indian state is not performing or you know what's the yardstick one yardstick is well relative to its India's per capita income how are other states doing at that level of income so you so India's income as some of you know now is what the US had hundred years ago roughly around the end of World War one you know the American state in whatever 1960-1917 was you know had quite a few weaknesses and so you could say well you know it's not a big deal that's what you expect lower incomes means weaker institutions what's the big deal here second sort of yardstick is is about really about expectations you say look unless it performs better it's not the Indian society the economy that engine will begin to sputter so it's about your expectations rather than perhaps what might be the yardstick of that level of income which gives certain outcomes which we may not find to be adequate enough relative to the challenges at hand and hopefully we have discussed these sort of issues like later thank you difficult to do this in a sorry maybe I think I'll start with you because as I mentioned in the introduction you have an interesting insider outsider duality having been a member of the IS and now at the World Bank looking at things from a different perspective what's your general assessment I mean when we think about the Indian state people's attention generally turns first to the Indian civil service and we turn to the Indian civil service you turn to the IS which is the kind of elite apex the Indian state the Indian bureaucracy what's your assessment of where it is and how it's how it's changing because it hasn't it doesn't exist in the vacuum it's obviously not immune to changes that have been going around in India more generally over the past you know since independence right so I mean that the IS has been the subject of a lot of hand-wringing amongst people saying that you know this is one of the institutions that has done the worst and has gone speedily downhill and I have to say I don't agree with that at all one of the things that I see if you look at the long-term trend of where the IS was in at independence and now one of the biggest changes has been the change in the social background of ISR so it's much more representative as an institution so people in the IS today are far more representative of society than previously so it used to be this westernized elite that came from certain castes from certain certain regions and today it is a far more representative institution what that also means is that people who are now in the IS are much closer in social background to politicians and they're much closer with their nose to the ground have a much better sense of what people need on the ground so I actually do think that that's one big change that took place and those changes took place as sort of you say that you know there aren't any one stroke of the pen reforms but in fact there were one stroke of the pen reforms that took place in the recruitment system so the English essay was abolished in 1979 what that meant was that it led to a whole lot of people that came from the sciences that were not as conversant in writing English but for work on the IITs that came in it created a whole new diversity there was always reservation but in 1995 Mandal brought in much greater reservation of people from all kinds of different backgrounds so today you have okay then there was the you could write the exam in languages other than English what that meant was that the preeminence preeminence of English as something that made the IS as an elite service removed from reality or so people claimed removed from from the ground actually that changed and so I think that that's been probably one of the biggest changes that has taken place in the IS which can to a large extent explain the manner in which the IS today interacts with politicians with people and it and but our yardstick for measuring whether or not the IS is doing well still remains the same as it was in 1947 so if you look at the IS conduct rules the all India service conduct rules and it tells you what the officer like qualities are those officer like qualities for someone who comes from a small village and someone who comes from an elite you know UP Brahmin family would be very different and but we still stick to something that that was that was put in place way back in the 40s and 50s so you spoke about a democratization of the service which you know has had all sorts of ramifications for the composition the conduct and so on and so forth one area where we haven't seen a lot of progress and we were discussing this before is when it comes to gender yeah that women are still highly underrepresented in the service relative to the population why is that and what are what is them what does that mean what are the implications of that so I mean I can only speculate I mean women have never been more than 13 to 15% of the IS strength ever and that hasn't changed over time now why that is the case I mean if you look at you give it a broader sociological explanation coming from a more feminist background you would say well the society that you want to create is much more much more diverse in terms of caste and tribe and region but not more diverse in terms of gender so that's the broad sort of idea of a state that is that really doesn't think women are equal but why else that's the case I mean you that's really actually very difficult to say so do less women apply yes do less women compete yes but once they are in the system and once they do compete they actually do as well as men and once they're in the circuit so once they're in the service they actually do not do as well as men and so the kinds of jobs that women tend to get in the IS are very different from the kinds of jobs that men get and there are all kinds of stories not stories but in fact so women being so-called superseded which is that when they are due for certain promotions to the highest levels they in fact don't get those promotions and and so yes I think that that's been if you look at the long term trend it is in some way symptomatic of the kind of society you want to build I mean the numbers you cited 13 to 15 percent I mean if you look at parliament for instance you also see similar under representation right and you look at other parts of Indian society so it's not specific necessarily for the civil service but surprising so I would I will I'm very surprised that this hasn't changed in the IS I'm not surprised that it hasn't changed in other parts of because this is a competitive service so the people who are competing are already very highly educated people they're already highly driven people so what is it that prevents women from competing and you know the answers are not old you know it's family pressure etc that's all it's something about the perception that female candidates have of a labor market that they feel may discriminate against them that then prevents them and it happens in so many other places as well women just won't compete because of what they think may happen and and there aren't really a whole lot of role models that they can look up to and those that are look like they're complete outlaws so let me ask you one more thing and I want to get ring Joel in which is about the nature of the talent pool so many people have argued and it comes up in the book as well that you know what you really need to do to build a 21st century state given the complexity of the economy of you know you need to have somebody who's a food inspector who's a securities regulator who works on atomic science who you know all of the rest they need to bring in outside talent so there's this question of lateral entry so picking the best and the brightest from civil society from academia from the private sector and finding a way to bring them into government which you know is is fairly common in the United States for instance right I mean you have this this idea of local appointees and and they you know that's used to bring in these sorts of those sorts of backgrounds this is not something this particular government has been very keen to push on or at least a lot of people have been underwhelmed with what they've done is it a priority and what are the pros and cons because many people in the civil service obviously aren't huge fans of this I mean I think regardless of government there has been much much less of a representation of so-called technocrats from the outside entering into the fray and that kind of begs the question you know a generalist civil service or a specialist civil service and the civil service by definition was a generalist civil service okay but the government by definition is not a generalist government so the state is not a generalist state the state has pockets of specialization in it which together make for a system of governance now whether or not so lateral entrance I think lateral entrants have been in government way back from the 1980s on and sometimes more sometimes less they've always been the case there have been ways in which governments and ministers have circumvented rules so there's this idea of an officer on special duty okay when you're unable to bring in someone in a position unable to create a position that is a lateral position for whatever reason and there are many reasons for that you bring in someone on a temporary basis as a consultant for as an officer on special duty and there have been stories not stories there have been instances of ministers with front offices full of young Kennedy school graduates basically running a front office of of a minister and all of them have been offices on special duty so I think that the Indian state is not always the way it seems there are many ways in which things happen by stealth there are many ways in which the state can be circumvented both at the local level as well as the as the central level and and that happens then that's not clearly visible to the eye what is visible to the eye is the person that you can see which is probably the eye is officer or the or the minister so I think that lateral entry as a as a position or as a policy probably has not moved moved fast enough or has moved effectively enough but does that mean that there hasn't been much more of a lateral entrance by stealth I don't think so the other the other thing and I'm going to stop the other way in which expertise comes into government is through specialized committees so you find specialized committees that have historically been headed by you know have been headed by people who are well known in the field they may not be they may not be non-Indians and a lot of people feel very strongly about the fact that well there are a lot of people who are outside of India who should go back and who should be invited back I'm not so sure it's you know that it's that's sort of more of a self-serving argument but I think I think that there are many many ways in which the state brings in talent from the outside in advisory capacity if not in specific roles and positions so I want to bring you in because you've spent a lot of time in India but you've also spent a lot of time not in India and the former Soviet states in Southeast Asia in Africa and of course you know in various positions at the bank looking at things more imperative we talk in this book about the fact that India's institutions haven't kept up with other changes that have happened whether it's the economy society politics and so on and so forth but we often don't stop to to think about how India compares you know relative to others and that's sort of the question that the Vesh left off you know ended his remarks on how do you see this question of kind of you know governance in India circa 2017 that's a big question yeah well first of all I'm really pleased to be here with this panel when I got the invitation in addition to wanting to to join a panel with former friends and colleagues from Harvard and the World Bank I always take up the opportunity to read and think more seriously about India's public service Olivia and public institutions and there have been a series of great studies a lot of edited volumes over the course of time on that and the reason why I do is because and and as the editors themselves say in the introduction we know extraordinarily little about the process of state building it is always something that I find absolutely remarkable as a as a trained political scientist that someone who's who was supposed to spend being a discipline that thinks about politics and states and the performance of states um what is sort of shocking is how little we really know about how states are created um how states develop and the and the factors that lead states to develop um state performance and and and essentially the creation of functioning state institutions really nuts and bolts um we used to have when when we were going to graduate school you could focus as a political scientist you could focus on comparative politics international relations political theory or the last one and it was it was always the last one was public administration and nobody did that as far as I know and I don't think you can anymore in that I don't think there are there is such a thing as a concentration in a political in any modern political science department in public administration anymore um there's some you know last remaining schools of public administration the kennedy school is a school of public administration in name only um it does many many wonderful things but not as much as nuts and bolts public administration and the reason why I say that I'm always drawn to books on India is because from my vantage point from a comparative vantage point in development what's striking about India um are in fact the organizational depth complexity coherence and capacity of India's public institutions relative to others at their level of the economic development or relative I mean I wouldn't even to put it in you know in per capita GDP terms but just relative to most other countries around around the world the certainly developing countries um around the world um and and I'm always drawn to India because I want to understand how and why that happened and how that has been maintained over time there's always a simplistic explanation it's the it's the colonial legacy it's the coherence of the British profit system but obviously that's that's that that's far from the case um it has to do obviously with the level of India's democratic development um India's openness um the complexity of India's politics but I mean if you just look at the quality of India's public institutions it's just very very little comparative comparison now I spend most of my time in the World Bank looking at at failing and and um uh conflict affected states and I always use India as a benchmark because I always thought that getting those states to understand how India's institutions develop would be a more realistic mechanism for them to understand the development of public institutions sending them and thinking about IAS training for example was something that most countries around the world could only dream about the depth and coherence of public sector training um that India has um you know you have standout institutions obviously at the center that are that are truly world-class um that one could put against any um any country at war um so it that's what draws me to an understanding of India and so I get the the book 500 pages of it and I actually I really um uh delved into it because I I actually think it's in the details that's really what I understand it but what strikes me is is the remarkable kind of pessimism of the editors the last line I have to sort of say is you know you're talking about as India's challenge now the need the need for institutional form is vital if not necessary it is not a matter of choice but of survival I think the vesh probably so I mean give yourselves a break India um no I I think the you know land Pritchett and you referred you referred to it many times in the book um you know he did in his very clever and inimitable way um you know put out that kind of image of a flailing state which I found sort of extraordinarily attractive and what does he mean by a flailing state you know the brain and the the center thinks extraordinarily coherent is that the limbs are just going around um in an almost incoherent way so its ability to implement anything that comes from this strong core um and high capacity center is limited which is not terribly surprising in a country of the size scope and complexity and diversity um and and and democratic competition as India perhaps the other thing I'd say is that I come from a perspective everyone brings their own personal perspective into anything to do I grew up in New York City in the 1970s um if you think about the quality of American urban infrastructure and public institutions as late as the 70s and early 80s extraordinarily nepotistic you know extremely high levels of corruption was endemic um in American urban public institutions for um you know for most of the 20th century um and and you're talking about in the book solutions to India's public sector institutions problems relate things like well what about new public sector management sort of tools right how do you rid the bureaucracy of political interference which in light of the last couple of days in this country is still you know a significant problem I mean although I'm glad to use New York and not Washington DC but the point being that that that countries at far higher levels of wealth um and and and kind of longer term of institutional development are still struggling with many of the the same problems I know that the dimensionality and the depth may be much greater in India than that um but I don't necessarily see those as existential for India's public sector institutions I continue to question the the how did India build the strength that it that it had how is it not facing problems that so many others are are facing you know you you also you talk about the book about this lamentable issue of India not having enough civil servants for those of us who are going to work in the World Bank I mean find another country that has a problem of too few civil civil almost every country has the opposite right it always uses the public sector through pay for patronage and ever reason and always over hires and the problem is always trying to get control over the public sector on the quality of education that goes into the public sector again I don't think there's there's any any comparison the new forms of accountability that are being brought into public institutions in India although they're obviously at a very nascent stages that we recognize that in the book still extraordinary and transformational sort of shifts that the democratic system and accountability are bringing on those institutions and finally and you raise this in the in the commentary but the the the decentralization of authority and power at going all the way down to the panchayat garage level that's also having a kind of remarkable and transformative effect in public public institutions and what that means so I I still I come from a to India's public institutions probably from perhaps a very very different lens I recognize the problems that they have and the challenges they have to face in order to continue to play as constructive a constructive role in India's rapid development but they seem to me actually quite ordinary problems of public sectors in a lot of other much more developed and wealthier states and and actually again for India's level development I I find there's much to learn and much to engage in from the story of his public so Arvind Subramaniam who's the chief economic advisor to the government of India you know very well known in this city has this really lovely chart that he's fond of using which uh looks at you know the relationship between sort of inclusiveness and per capita income right there's this big literature now popularized by awesome over in robinson why nations fail and spooky on many others it's sort of broadly is saying you know there's this relationship that if you have inclusiveness inclusive institutions you know there's a generally positive relationship with per capita income and Arvind points out that there's two big outliers there India and China right India is very inclusive doesn't have a very large high per capita income China is very exclusive but it has a very high per capita income and you know many people would say well the reason for that is because of India's weak state right you don't have a state apparatus that's able to to to really deliver and so therefore you have this disjuncture between you know robust democratic accountability on the one hand but low per capita income because you're missing the sort of thing in the middle which is the kind of quality of whether it's law whether it's civil service whether it's you know basic social service delivery I mean how would you sort of respond to that kind of argument well I think the what it when it does go to show is that we still really don't have an understanding of what the impact of institutions are on performance overall right so you know if we again think about where our thinking about political politics and and and institutions are going the institutional wave is all the raid right it's all about well let's think about the quality of institutions being the kind of a fundamental factor that drives performance by nation's fail is talking about at the low end of development and I think Arvin's talking about you know across the board and I think that's a that is a relationship that we feel don't still be fully understanding what is the causal impact of institutions in shaping economic outcomes right so I think that that that kind of is is part of the reason that sort of leads to kind of the questions as to why sort of China's public sector institutions which look very different in India's public sector institutions what impact they might have on performance but again I also suggest I think that you know what Dvesh put on the table earlier is is again measuring what yards that what yards that we are using to measure the relationship between institutions and outcomes right so our what what are we what are institutions trying to to G what are they kind of what is their performance is it stability is it creating you know the framework for democratic competition in a stable environment is it maximizing growth and the potential and opportunity sort of for growth there are you know many possible outcomes that we think of for institutions and I I don't have a kind of clear linear story about whether India's inclusive institutions impact those outcomes in a predictable way I'd like to bring you in here because I mean one of the constant themes of your writings over the course of many years has been on the relative inattention by political actors in India to the infirmities of the Indian state and I guess I would just ask you know given what Joel has said is that well maybe things aren't as bad maybe there is no deep institutional malaise you know why do we care so much about this so you might be surprised I actually agree with the little word Joel says I mean I mean I am surprised you know in the sense that so two things right one is I think what do we in a sense know about state formation and develop and more generally I mean I think I think other than saying that the world is kind of thick with causality in all kinds of different directions I think I think the era where you could actually say you know there's the theory that explains it all is it institutions is social capital I think I think it's more important to in a sense focus on mechanisms rather than kind of the single single theory having said that I let me just explain I think why there's a reason and which is I think compatible with Joel's kind of broader account which is that if you look at certain raw characteristics India stands out and obviously the you know the underlying premise of a book like this is it is a functioning democracy it is a functioning society so it's you know and and there must be something going on that actually in a sense enables them enables that to happen but I think what comes out of the different chapter is very clearly I think is something that I think should give us a little bit of pause and it also goes to Joel's remark about the United States right which is one that institutions it turns out are very fragile things and by that we mean specifically the idea that there is a notion out there in the literature right that if you simply design institutions and get design elements right you will be a good way to solving problems right I think one of the conclusions of the book is so big that actually design helps but I think we have to ask the question under what conditions does do those designs features work into the help I mean like you know as there's only one good social science question under what conditions right but the reason to worry and that goes to Joel's question about why this question about crisis and survival and all of that is is the I think you know is I think the following there are lots of accumulated small bottlenecks to the way our institutions function that can over time if they're not addressed have huge political ramifications right so if you just think of this particular moment in our democracy is the United States and India right one thing to have in common I think is there seems to be or there was a moment of a certain kind of impatience with let's say for example legislative gridlock right where legislatures became the epitome of gridlock of plutocracy of special interest right I mean I mean there's a there's a commonality to that discourse right and at one level you can you know look at this question when it's raised about legislatures and say oh yeah but they're still functioning legislatures they're still functioning democracies there's still a lot going on in these legislatures yet if these problems are not addressed you could actually create the seeds of the destruction of those very institutions right and so I think the language about anxiety in survival is not so much a kind of a description of a fact as a quote that this is you know in a sense about to happen it is really to say that look there is certainly I think in in in in our democracies and the last Indian election was actually I think I think good sort of you know I think an indication of that fact that it is possible that given the kind of institutional life we have there may be actually a certain kind of impatience with the way in which institutions are functioning that could create the very conditions in which actually the legitimacy of these institutions erodes to a point right what happens if the Supreme Court orders are not obeyed by governments tomorrow right real possibility right so in that sense in that sense I think I think the language of crisis in survival is not that you know the Indian state has not done something well and you know and so forth but it is really to focus our attention on you know a stitch in nine a stitch in time saves nine kind of a you know I think a challenge and frankly at this moment and our democracy we have to take that challenge very very seriously we know a lot of people the vish say you know go on and on about institutions but if you look at the 2000s when India had you know record right the fastest growth it did that in spite of its institutional foundations right and so if this current government is able to again get back to eight nine perhaps double digit growth are these institutional questions actually that central because they seem to be delivering a lot even though you know we have a lot of criticism to offer I think you know it's been raised again you know well everyone used to talk about corruption in China and India right the World Bank talk a lot about corruption in China and India and they were the fastest growing countries you know so people say well what's the big deal about corruption I think one of the things is is to think about this in a longer horizon you know rather than the present and the next few years I mean one thing is you know we know that for most countries high rates of growth do not persist for long periods of time the very few countries that have has sustained you know three decades of high growth rates this is happening it's it's only a handful of countries for most you have spurts and then you have institutions bottlenecks and things run so there is that issue I think going back to Joel's point about yardstick I think for me and and maybe that's why I ended on that pessimistic nod Joel is in a sense someone you and I sort of worked with or you know when you and I would was Sam Huntington's you know sort of original sort of opus on political order it's about expectations when India has an incredible youth bulge the sorts of processes and other high growth episodes in the past high growth led to massive you know hence employment movement out from agriculture into non-agriculture that's not happening and you could argue in the 21st century that will not happen technology whatever now that's when I think having weak or strong institutions might matter much more are they able to manage in a sense higher levels of political you know disorder if these very high aspirations expectations of a very large youth that has credentials but really not that many natural skills for the modern you know labor market you need a whole set of functioning institutions essentially to manage this right to work things out and they become the battleground actually rather than managing they become the battleground of these expectations and aspiration so if I can just jump in there I think this is the point at which we probably need to dwell on what this book doesn't do so the fact that it it looks at the macro level federal institutions is and essentially makes prognostications based on that I think is daughters I think is the flaw in it in it so it's one of one of them okay I think that a lot of what goes on in India happens at the local level a lot of the innovation takes place at the local level and I'm just wondering whether we are putting too much of an onus on these large public institutions for the delivery of a number of different outcomes so is there an implicit bias of attribution that we have which says that it's because of these institutions that certain things are happening or not happening when in fact there is a whole host of other unobservables that take that that are happening on the ground I mean and this I'm not even talking about the stealth with which certain things happen within these institutions where the law or the or the rules say one thing but in fact something else is happening and it happens both for the positive and for the negative but in fact there are things that are happening outside of these institutions both through state level and local level institutions but also outside of public institutions so and not just the non-government organizations and not just the panchayats and and actually I think that Raghuv's chapter on decentralization is actually a fairly good depiction of where where decentralization is I think the piece that he doesn't talk about which is which is a really important piece which again brings me to the to the part of you know who's left out in all of this is the panchayat extension to schedule areas act which is you know the schedule five areas which is the tribal areas in India but that's a separate issue I think that there are a lot of local level initiatives lot of self-help stuff that's going on and has always historically gone on so the role of public institutions I think is extremely salient and extremely significant but that's not all that's leading to outcomes go to bad yeah go ahead please sorry quickly I I think you're absolutely right in fact one of the things we actually kind of say explicitly which is that there's no attempt in the book in a sense attribute outcomes I mean the outcomes of form a kind of general backdrop as it were in fact I think one of the big challenges is how do you actually attribute these outcomes I think as you all suggested but but let me push you a little bit on this while kind of I think agreeing with the general thrust of you know your remarks which is I think the both the selection bias in terms of what we focus on as examples of successful outcomes and the kinds of institutions we then sort of say explain those outcomes so at one level I think that there's going to be an inevitable feature of in a sense any any kind of project right I mean but I am not as I mean I'm a big rotary of decentralized decentralization for institutional normative reasons but I worry that I think a lot of the success we attribute to that and the kind of resilience of Indian society NGOs and all of that also is built on a kind of selection bias of its own kind so if you look at the big problems that India is going to face going ahead right so a lot of the focus was on kind of you know delivery of special things that's how because those are easy to measure right education some health drinking water public services but the fact of the matter is India probably has the most polluted water most poisonous air in the world right it still has a massive public health crisis climate change all of that stuff kind of coming on I'm not sure I mean and I think this is an open question which is I'm not sure that models of decentralization and models of in a sense civil society engagement right which were designed around in a sense you know addressing specific needs you know deliver this service deliver that service are actually in a sense fitted to manage these kinds of complex challenges right and I do think you know to that extent I think this this kind of move that we took right look the opposite you know we did that with states and markets right when states don't function maybe market is the solution when central states doesn't function decentralization solution I do think it is time that we'll have to actually have to sort of break out of that in a sense I think a little bit so yeah I you know when you think about the kinds of complex challenges that you put on the table and the recognition that that the outcomes as a result of those challenges really do require some you know significant engagement performance on the institutional front deal with them and they do have sort of serious consequences for overall long-term development what strikes me and what I was looking for in the book is that when you write a book about public sector institutions you talk about institutions the tendency is to think that there is something in the functioning in or in the structure the organizational coherence of those institutions that are leading to its inability to tackle those complex challenges so you look at this institution you look at the civil service you look at the RBI you look at the and you sort of say what's wrong with the way in which this institution functions or the way in which this institution is organized but but I'm I'm not fully convinced that it's actually something within the structure organization design capacity of the institution itself what I hear and what I would I read about when you actually talk about it in case by case is that there is something in the political arena that shapes what institutions can and can do there's a political intervention in a political engagement there's a political background there's an ethnic and and you know milk levels of of engagement that impacts the way institutions are structured that impacts the way institutions sort of function so it's not really about the organizational design itself it's something more deeply rooted in the in the political process and and so I my tendency to think is that when you think about the challenges that you laid on the table I wonder to what extent is it the institutional design that's going to deal with this but what is that what are the underlying political roots of the dysfunction that you're talking about and when you started describing what you saw as the biggest risks because of these bottlenecks and others that are leading to a deal with your organization institution I thought you were talking about the United States I mean I mean in other words you know the inability to have getting things done the inability of getting to agreement I mean look at the functioning of you know of our legislature here you know gives the looks up run for its money in terms of coherence you know so there is something about the way in which democratic systems are handling these complex challenges that that I don't I'm not sure that the underlying variable that's at a critical here is something in the structure of institutional functioning as it is something about the the nature of the democratic competition and how it sort of shapes the mediating role of institutions so uh good please so I I mean which is none of what I say is meant to be overly sanguine about the whole I agree I mean the the challenges I've asked and I don't agree on the doomsday scenario but I do agree that the challenges are perhaps one thing that we've that has permeated the or mediated the relationship of institutions with politics with people with outcomes has been the structure of center state relations and the and the manner in which regional parties have asserted state control and state you know state state priorities to the detriment of public institutions and now have state level institutions stepped in to to fill that void or to or to sort of bridge that tension yes and no not enough that outcomes on the ground would change not enough that health or education would improve and there's several part times in the book you say that you know the the whole tension between who is responsible for for policymaking in health versus implementation in health or who is responsible for the ways in which fiscal flows are are are determined to a very large extent affects the manner in which outcomes actually are good or bad so I think that this tension between the IS is is a classic example of the manner in which states and regional parties have actually asserted their control over an institution that by definition had dual control and the dual control had the preeminence by the federal or the central government but over time the state government has asserted its control over it and that to a large extent has has led to to the manner in which IS officers have tended to to to identify with their state level masters as opposed to their central level masters so let me just end with the Vesh because then we'll bring get some questions from others since you've been now labeled Mr. Doomsday so you know if you think about the current political moment post Uttar Pradesh a betting person would say that Prime Minister Modi is likely to get second term you know a lot can happen but if current trends continue the start of a second term in a strong position in the lower house would be matched for the first time by a strong position in the upper house which the current government and its allies laugh um and that this could lead to there's sort of three doors the first door is personalism kind of closing of space and a kind of over centralization of power the second is the kind you know muddling through and the third is that actually this political power gets used to fix some of these larger questions on institutions that have often not been adequately addressed because you've had political fragmentation which door are we going to see what's your sense I asked you the first the first undoubtedly in my mind can you elaborate on that can you elaborate I think I think all the tendencies I mean are headed in that the direction this is not one has seen very few signs of a government that has used its power to strengthen institutions has used its power to try and implement better implement programs projects which it has highways you know solving problems that's very different from strengthening institutions because almost always when you strengthen institutions they become a check on part the very in some ways the institution designed into democracies is about checks and balances uh I certainly do not see I at least in my reading of this government that there is a deep desire for strengthening those checks and balances and you so you could well get better outcomes in a sense of you know better project implementation right more investment more investment more bank accounts yeah so you could get a lot of that there is no reason to you know lots of countries that are not very democratic have done well you know we have this myth in political science which we repeat or you know democracies these things these slice bread etc etc the koreas and thai ones and all they did pretty well you know in those circumstances so I mean if you want to separate outcomes from institutions you could get both you could get much better outcomes and much weaker institutions okay there's a lot there but I want to to refrain and bring in other voices so we have some microphones going around I just ask you know as usual please identify yourself keep your questions short and we'll try to take as many as possible and a little bit after 5 30 since we started late this gentleman here uh in the afternoon my name is Prasad Kadambi I'm a consultant in nuclear safety and I'd like to know what this panel has to say in your study of public institutions in India about the department of atomic energy and where does it stand relative to the other public institutions and where do you see it going okay we'll take another question right here in the end hello Tuneer Mukherjee with American University thank you so much for your discussion and thoughts about Indian public institutions actually have a few questions I'll be quick about them first of all you've seen sometimes personalities kind of take the spotlight instead of the public institutions we know the CIG and RBI being one of the examples is that good for public institutions going into the future or would it be better for public institutions to have you know their leaders more under the radar and do their work suddenly and secondly you see a rule of law and public institution being strengthened in Latin America and the organization of American states doing a lot of work with that ideology going forward and you saw that the corruption scandal is breaking out in Brazil and Mexico do you think India being in the position where it is in Central Asia Middle East in China and South Asia lacks such an organization or coherent interchange between countries around the region but actually India stands out of the example in the region rather than drawing from examples we talk about America and the West but India being where it is is actually in a precarious position and the final question is the public institution of Lokpal which you know dominated the headlines for the best part of the beginning of the 2010s has actually vanished from the sphere and nothing has moved on from that is that a public institution that will end up happening or was that all a farce that was coming out of the corruption scandals thank you okay you cheated a bit there but I will confess complete and total ignorance about India's atomic and we should have Ashley tell us I'll give you his email but do you want to know just that look the department of atomic energy historically is always reported directly to the prime minister's office it is not something that is the most transparent office it has always had a dual thing nuclear energy and the nuclear weapons program and for those reasons it cannot be very transparent that's about as much as I know personalities so Vinodurai who was the CNAG who really brought that accountability institution to the fore Raghuram Raj and TN Session who was a landmark chief election commissioner Pratap a good thing or a bad thing so I think the way to think about it is what are they using their power for right is it to strengthen an institutional law or is it in a sense to aggrandize themselves I think that's that's really the question so I think I think the test is did they put in place you know processes procedures whatever that under reasonable circumstances I mean this is a critical cataclysm and so forth you would look back and say they actually left the institution better off I think unfortunately it turns out in most of the cases not in either all questions sometimes there are these moments where when an institution is being politically challenged for all kinds of social forces political forces outside actually strong leadership matters in fact one of the one of the surprising conclusions of the book of consonants with what Joel says about the limitations of design is often institutions that have actually quite autonomous are quite autonomous on paper actually don't exercise that autonomous power as much in some sign institutions whose formal design doesn't seem to protect them as much actually leadership can help but I think the critical reason is not that I think the critical thing you have to think about and I think the CAG is a good example right is how is the institution embedded in a chain of other institutions that allows you to pass a judgment that what is really going on is a chain of accountability I think what happened with the CAG right I mean I think I think in principle there was no problem with raising the profile of the CAG uh suddenly people actually even discovered that this institution existed as opposed to Devesh being the only person who read 30 years of such reports in one paper he he he wrote the myth of the Sicilian state right but where was the breakdown right in our constitutional scheme actually parliament needed to have taken a call after this in fact I I'm I was and I still remain opposed to the Lokpal as an institution I think it's a terrible idea uh right it's a terrible idea because you actually already have a mechanism at hand which is a parliamentary committee a parliamentary committee has the final locus of accountability should be able to sift through which CAG reports you accept in which you reject and should be able to explain that through public reason right because you don't want to be in a position where the CAG has vetoed over everything and that's that's a complete disaster right so I think when you talk about in a sense that institutional story you have to ask whether that's circle of accountability and whether each chain in that mechanism is actually complete almost all the solutions people have been proposing have been premised on the idea that you cannot complete that chain so what you need is some overpowering individual institution to in a sense act as a substitute to settle it um I don't know if Joel you want to take the issue of the regional question which is you know as a region south asia is generally under institutionalized when it comes to cross-border organizations is that something that should be a priority for for india and if any we want to tackle that I would say a priority for what I mean if it's if it's regional organizations to deal with regional disputes and how to handle interactions across neighborhoods that that's one thing and indeed south asia is the least regionally institutionalized and and and one could argue that there's there's could be very powerful and important impacts if there was ever a way to to come to regional agreements but I think that's very very far off indeed when you the OAS model gave is is is the extent to which the regional a regional organization can use the collective power in some way as a mechanism to impact internal politics of member countries by using the collective power as a somehow as a constraint or disciplining mechanism as OAS is trying to do now in venezuelan others and in that respect I don't I don't see much that you would achieve um in south asia and certainly in indian concept I think to me and it kind of goes back to the original subtext of the discussion I'm fascinated by india playing a stronger role in multilateral institutions um in in bringing its voice and his experience and because of the at the high capacity at the upper at the upper levels across drugs he's therefore the the ability to engage at the at the highest levels um uh within multilateral institutions is strong the potential is there I think india's role in multilateral institutions is one in which would be able to help us understand better the indian experience and its applicability that we learned from it elsewhere which is what you know which is what brought me to read the book in the first place so I I think you know I'm I'm more interested in seeing in the existing panoply of multilateral institutions how does india bring its voice in its story more strongly into those institutions regional institutions for dealing with cross border issues it's a entirely different matter yeah I mean I think that there are many many reasons why um they could there there needs to be regional but is will it have an impact on institute I don't necessarily think that's the way to go and I don't necessarily think that india being held up as as an example of institutions having done better than others is a plausible narrative a god so I think there are many reasons for original integration but not to put pressure on one or other institution let's just take maybe one final lightning round and then we'll uh Sasha in the back yeah thanks Melinda it's uh Sasha Reiser-Kaziski from Eurasia group but we all know that you know the indian state is desperately understaffed right there's not enough police there's a judiciary there's not enough judges there's not enough pharmaceutical inspectors and the list goes on and on and on and on and as you already noted um as divesh noted it's it's hard to see the government ponying up and willing and being willing to strengthen these institutions in part because it could act on a check on their power but I was wondering in what areas do you see the state going forward actually working and putting the money to strengthen that capacity and increase the the number of people uh required great good question um there was one uh yeah on the aisle there aditya miss aditya I'm a graduate student uh speak up a little sorry my name is aditya I'm a graduate student at uh George Washington University my question is kind of following up on Sasha's question which is are all institutions going to be treated equally are some institutions more important than others um in some field work in behalf that I did people often talk about how sort of you know that the bureaucracy or you know this discretionary use by the by the by the civil surface actually kind of you know undoes much of the work that politicians do so you know it's kind of like you know some some institutions actually uh eat up on the space by by others so in that sense you know if one has to go about strengthening some institutions does one strengthen you know someone's more than the others or you know like is this like a zero some game so to speak or you know can one strengthen all institutions at you know at at the same time so let's just in the interest of ending roughly around time why don't we just take those and and whoever wants to opine I mean the first question is they're sort of related right I mean one is about if you had to sort of guess where this government would invest you know what what are the various areas the second is you know is there a sort of zero some aspect that if you spend all of your chips on one then somebody else gets left behind I don't know Prithap if you want to start um I think two quick points so one of course building institutions is a process and a very sort of complicated interactive process so sometimes institutions are indirect products or something you did elsewhere in society for completely extraneous reasons right so so one of the things for example I mean you know you're you might for populist reasons want to actually increase your taxation capabilities but if you increase your taxation capital capabilities it might actually allow you more play in terms of investment in institutions and and I think right now the optimistic part of the story is this kind of what you might call techno fiscalism right that you sort of have some kind of technology and greater fiscal efficiency on the taxation side that should give the state a lot of headroom to improve I think I think you know and and the Modi government's big achievements are largely in that area with all you know with some dangers kind of I think I think attached to it but if you look at the institutions in a slightly different way right not just as sort of these kind of raw capacities uh the institution's ability you know which is what institutions largely are to sort of channelize and mediate conflict right uh then I think it is actually I think an open question I think one of the big surprises to everybody in the Modi government is that you would have expected more and more intelligent investment in the basic sovereign functions of the state right police security paramilitary right if you do it right actually arguably even more neglected than there were and and it's showing up in our ability to mediate mediate conflict I mean it's not just many of those conflicts are not just law and order problems right but surely the instrumentalities of the state at your disposal CRPF is I think a perfectly good example right uh surprisingly you're actually not finding any break with that historical pattern of sort of letting the military and paramilitary do some stuff relatively cheaply right without thinking of what organizational changes are required to make law and order strong functions well I I have no answer to the question I actually to me I'm I'm distantly struck by the puzzle why why under staff systematically um in India I mean the political imperative to overstaff is so strong in you know in so many other places of the world especially those with democratic competition especially those with a decentralized structure of government I it's it's it's going to tell me the magic that leads to understand now obviously that doesn't mean that I don't think that the understanding is not a significant problem but it is a it is a political puzzle in in a country in which you would use public sector employment for for patronage reasons if you would use it you know for you know kind of political sort of support network building I I don't understand why systematically you'd understand plus so many institutions so the staffing I mean I think that it's a little bit damned if you do and damned if you don't so you there was this in the early 80s the IAS the the current strength of the IAS which means basically the number of IAS officers was it was there was this this big hullabaloo about the fact that there was too many IAS officers and states were really pushing back no states were not pushing back the Ministry of Home Affairs was pushing back saying that you need to reduce your intake of IAS officers so then there was a very dramatic reduction somewhere around the 90s very dramatic reduction of intake into the IAS but there was interestingly a commensurate and I don't know the numbers on this there was a commensurate increase in well not commensurate but an increase in the strength of the state civil service and and there was there was an basically states tended to stop up where whereas the central government tended to stop down and that in a sense plays to some of the political issues that you raise Joel I just wonder if the so I think that yes it is understaffed but I also think that the understaffing probably exists more at the central level than it does at the state and local level except for certain categories so you will find that at the local level you're unable to find people that reside in doctors that live in rural areas or people from scheduled tribes that the vacancies are notorious among the scheduled tribes you're just not able to fill those seats so part of the reason for these large number of vacancies is that that you're not able to for whatever reason find schedule scheduled tribe not schedule scheduled tribe candidates for certain types of jobs now whether or not you're looking whether or not your pool is the way it is whether or not your adverse advertising in the right places is a separate issue but that to a large extent not to a large extent but that to an extent explains the the level of vacancies at the local level at the central level I just think that there was a concerted decision to trim down and people are just scared of what would happen if they started to start back up Vesh you apparently had the last word in the book and I had the last word on stage so here's some basic facts so between 1990 and about 2015 absolute start size of the Indian state dropped by about 10 percent this includes central state and local government officials the same period India's population increased by about 365 million which is more than the population of the united states the however these numbers mask a shift in the structure of staffing now find and this happened after a book that were 40 percent of government staff at the central government is contract labor so there's a big shift in the underlying dynamics of this is also happening in states where many of the teachers are contract teachers so this this and we know that that labor markets worldwide the nature of employment contracts has been changing enormously the world bank has been changing and so this is also reflected so part of this thing is that this number you know there are various ways if you're not sure whether it includes contracts some reports some don't etc the second is that one of the biggest puzzles at the state level is very low very high rates of vacancies in the police you know every politician you might think was to pack at least with the police and you know just the beat guy very high rates of of like we can see now one thing is that there's a another you know government mechanism in India called the finance called the pay commission which is something of a rarity in India so every you know periodically they come up with pay rises which cascades to the entire system and that puts very large fiscal you know pressures at a time when the governments because of other political pressures have been sharply increasing social welfare programs at least expenditures and at the same time when because the fiscal responsibility management act have been trying to put the ceiling on government expenditures actually interesting related to Qatar's point which is you know defense expenditure for instance now you know normally you expect right wing governments security conscious defense expenditure is a fraction of the GDP is almost at a 50 year loan it is incredible that you would expect the contrary but actually it's the opposite the single biggest increase in hiring of personnel of the central government has been paramilitary for forces in personnel not necessarily as the top said in equipment and you know I think two things why you know the Indian systems checks and balances which drive people off in knots that you know the procedure actually make it a very proactive process to hire people it's not that easy first you have all these reservations which means that the candidate must come from these groups so if you don't have from these groups then it takes a lot of time that it can spill over to a general hiring that just takes a long time then so what you begin to see is that there have been some creative thing and this is what leads essentially to outsourcing when you contract label is a form of outsourcing much more private contracts like the different things are being done so the the personnel processes in fact if there's one part of the thing that again we didn't have but you know and we talked about the UPSC it's the very strength of the system which is very procedure laden also means it's very hard to pack and bring your folks in at least in large numbers so I think we'll formally end the conversation here and again hope that you all can join us downstairs for refreshments and the book is on sale I'll just mention as an aside that there's a great arbitrage opportunity to buy this book now rather than online I want to thank May 3 and Joel for lending their perspectives and of course thank all of you for coming and thank the Vesh and and Pratap who has come literally across the ocean to be with us today so thank you all