Successful Governance Reforms in Two Indian States: Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh

No systematic, overall agenda for governance reform has ever been developed by national leaders in India. Each recent government in New Delhi has experimented with certain initiatives, but these have never added up to a fully elaborated strategy. To a great extent, this is explained by national leaders' awareness that most of the actual governing in India occurs at and below the state level in this federal system, and that the Constitution gives state governments control over several key areas in which governance reform might be attempted. They have also recognised that several state governments, led by a diversity of parties, have developed promising governance reforms – so national leaders' reforms have often consisted substantially of ideas borrowed from the state level. There are important exceptions to this – not least the recent passage of a Right to Information Act by the Congress-led government in New Delhi. But a great many promising governance reforms in India have emerged at the state level.