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CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
2023-2024
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
ANNUAL REPORT 2023-2024
CEGIS
Snapshot
2023-2024
CONTENT
REFLECTIONS ON CEGIS’ JOURNEY
Message from the Co-founder, Ashish Dhawan
CEGIS: CONTRIBUTING TO ACCELERATING
INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT
Message from the Co-founder and Scientific Director,
Prof. Karthik Muralidharan
CEGIS: THE ORGANISATION
THE YEAR IN REVIEW: 2023-24 FOR CEGIS
13
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR (KPI)
SURVEY IN TELANGANA
25
COMPETENCY-BASED CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
OF THE OFFICE OF CGPDTM
35
STRENGTHENING STATE CAPACITY
THROUGH GST REVENUE AUGMENTATION
43
INSTITUTIONALISING DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS
IN TAMIL NADU FINANCE DEPARTMENT
51
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: SETTING
FOUNDATIONS AND THE ROAD AHEAD
57
BUILDING CEGIS’ ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
61
Message from the Head of People and Culture,
Aravinda Krishnamurthy
FOUNDERS
63
LEADERSHIP
64
ADVISORY BOARD
67
THE WAY AHEAD AT CEGIS
70
Message from the CEO, Dr. Vijay Pingale
DONORS AND PARTNERS
73
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
CEGIS was born five years ago when my
interest in state finances was growing, and
Karthik Muralidharan—whose work and
dedication I have admired for many years—was
conceptualising an institution to help improve
government effectiveness across Indian states.
We both recognised that the government(s) is
the main actor when it comes to addressing
India’s growth and development challenges
at the population-level, and wanted to work
towards making this happen: this shared
vision of strengthening state capacity for
outsized impact led us to co-found CEGIS. The
importance of effective governance and state
capacity also underscores a lot of my other
initiatives at The Convergence Foundation
(TCF), which was founded in 2021 with the aim
of accelerating India’s economic growth and
development on a sustained inclusive basis.
CEGIS is now a part of TCF’s portfolio (which
includes 15+ other organisations that focus on
different socio-economic challenges).
CEGIS has witnessed rapid growth since its
inception. From being in one state (Telangana)
in 2019, we are now in five states/sub-states:
Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), Delhi,
Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. We
are supporting the state governments through
several projects like: conducting the flagship
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) survey and
designing and instituting processes for staff
performance measurement and management
with the Panchayati Raj and Rural Development
Department in Telangana; Early Childhood
Development (ECD) Mission in BTR, Tamil
Nadu and Telangana; Revenue augmentation
project with the Government of National Capital
Territory of Delhi (GoNCTD).
I am deeply grateful for the trust that
government ofÏcials have placed in our team.
CEGIS is committed to supporting them with
valuable knowledge, insights, and practical
roadmaps to enhance capacity and create
scalable impact. I must also thank our advisory
board members for their strategic direction in
this endeavour.
As the organisation has scaled, it has become
essential to establish robust systems and
processes in Human Resources (HR), technology,
donor management and engagement. Today,
CEGIS boasts a balanced leadership team with
expertise in governance, management and
social impact. We are focused on building
organisational processes, ensuring quality control
and managing knowledge effectively.
MESSAGE FROM THE CO-FOUNDER
REFLECTIONS ON
CEGIS’ JOURNEY
CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
ANNUAL REPORT 2023-2024
We also gain strength from the abiding strength
of our donors. With their help, we have been
able to expand significantly, and their continued
support will accelerate the next phase of our
institutional growth. I thank them for all their
contributions.
Looking ahead, CEGIS plans to scale its initiatives
across more states by leveraging data effectively
and establishing the Financial Analytics Unit
(FAU) and the Data Analytics Unit (DAU). Our goal
is to help build capacity in States by setting up
institutional mechanisms in the areas of finance,
data and personnel. This approach will ensure
sustainable and impactful implementation at the
grassroots level.
Ultimately, we strive to make our support to
state governments redundant, enabling them
to independently expand and sustain our
initiatives. Achieving this requires a robust
ecosystem of governance and partnerships
across various sectors and levels. Through
collaborative efforts, we aim to significantly
impact the country’s growth and development
as we look to celebrate a century of India’s
independence. I remain optimistic about the
future and express my gratitude to everyone who
has been a part of this exciting journey.
Ashish Dhawan
Founder-CEO, TCF;
Co-founder, CEGIS
I am deeply grateful for
the trust that government
ofÏcials have placed in our
team. CEGIS is committed
to supporting them with
valuable knowledge, insights,
and practical roadmaps to
enhance capacity and create
scalable impact.
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
As we complete five years of CEGIS’ existence, it
gives me great pleasure to share my reflections
on the journey so far and our plans and goals for
the coming years.
As we take stock of India in our 75th year
as a Sovereign Republic, we have a lot to be
proud of including being the world’s largest
democracy and one of its fastest growing
economies. Yet, one of the biggest constraints
to accelerating India’s development is the
weak delivery of essential public services like
education, health, child development, rural
and urban civic amenities, safety, and justice.
Further, a key insight from years of research,
is that weak public service delivery in India is
not just due to inadequate spending (as often
posited), but largely due to the poor translation
of spending into outcomes. This low quality
of public spending, in turn, reflects chronic
underinvestment in our public systems of
governance to deliver better development
outcomes at any given level of spending.
In 2019, I embarked upon two projects to reflect
these insights. The first was to synthesise years
of research and practical experience into a
book that aimed to provide both a conceptual
and practical roadmap for governance reforms
to strengthen India’s public systems, and
government effectiveness. The second was to
set up an organisation that could help translate
these ideas into reality by supporting state
governments who were keen on implementing
such reforms in doing so, which was the main
goal for building CEGIS.
My original plan was to do these in sequence,
but the support of Ashish Dhawan along with
his shared conviction on the importance of this
mission enabled CEGIS to be built alongside the
writing of the book. The roadmap from the book
- “Accelerating India’s Development” which
was released in March 2024, informs CEGIS’
Theory of Change (TOC) for building effective
public systems by strengthening four key
systemic components of state capacity: outcome
MESSAGE FROM THE CO-FOUNDER
CEGIS: CONTRIBUTING
TO ACCELERATING
INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
measurement, personnel management,
strategic public finance, and better leveraging
markets in the public interest. Over the
past five years, CEGIS has become a mature
organisation that has already demonstrated
its ability to support state governments in
designing and implementing initiatives to
strengthen public systems.
This process of helping to translate ideas
into reality in partnership with several
outstanding state government ofÏcials has
also created a virtuous feedback loop between
‘thinking’, ‘doing’, ‘learning’, and ‘iterating’ our
interventions based on field-level feedback.
CEGIS is therefore well-positioned to
contribute to accelerating India’s development
journey.
A TRUSTED PARTNER TO
GOVERNMENTS
The biggest marker of success is that the
CEGIS team is increasingly considered a
trusted partner to state governments seeking
analytical and implementation support
for complex governance reforms. The best
compliment came from a senior state finance
department ofÏcial who has worked closely
with CEGIS, and observed to me that: “the
CEGIS teams are competent, committed,
humble, and trustworthy”. He also noted that:
“Nothing will happen without leadership
within the government; but when there is a
reforming leader or ofÏcial, the presence of
the CEGIS team makes it much more likely that
the change will happen.” This same sentiment
was expressed by a senior ofÏcial in another
state, and these observations provide a ringing
endorsement of the CEGIS value proposition
as a partner and accelerator to change-makers
within the government.
STRONG LEADERSHIP TEAM,
TALENT, AND ORGANISATIONAL
PROCESSES
At the 5-year mark, a key marker of
organisational maturity is a stable leadership
team led by CEO Vijay Pingale, who has
built an outstanding leadership team
spanning experience across a wide range of
backgrounds. Together, they provide both
stability and new perspectives and have helped
build the organisational processes and systems
that enable CEGIS to deliver against project
needs and government expectations.
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
AND ADVISORY BOARD
Another marker of organisational maturity
is the setting up of a top-quality advisory
board comprising national leaders spanning
government, private, and non-profit sectors. The
advisory board has been meeting on a quarterly
basis since Q4 2023, and provides guidance,
oversight, and support to the leadership team.
DIVERSIFIED FUNDING FROM
LONG-TERM STRATEGIC DONORS
CEGIS’ model of functioning at no cost to the
government, relies on financial support from
strategic donors with a long-term horizon
who understand the transformative impact of
improving government functioning on citizens’
lives. While set up with dedicated support
from Ashish Dhawan and The Convergence
Foundation, CEGIS’ funding base has expanded
and diversified significantly in recent years to
include several leading global funders. This
diversified funding is in turn a critical marker
of organisational maturity and stability for the
years ahead.
FUNCTIONING AS AN
‘ECOSYSTEM’ PLAYER
Since governance has a force-multiplier effect
on the effectiveness of programs in all sectors,
CEGIS hopes to catalyse transformative impact
by supporting other like-minded organisations
with a deep sectoral focus to amplify the impact
of their work through our complementary
work on strengthening public data systems,
human resource systems, and financial systems.
One example of playing such an ‘ecosystem’
enabling role was the workshop on “Data-driven
Governance” curated by CEGIS in May 2024
that was attended by several top government
ofÏcials across states and also by many partner
organisations. The event showcased CEGIS’
ability to convene decision makers and partners
around key systemic issues pertaining to better
governance.
PRIORITIES GOING FORWARD
The completion and release of the book
“Accelerating India’s Development”, and the
wide positive acclaim it has received provides
an opportune moment to catalyse both public
awareness of, and government actions to
prioritise investments in governance and
state capacity that can improve government
functioning across sectors.
Going forward, key priorities for CEGIS include
(a) continuing to deliver world-class output
against existing commitments to governments;
(b) building CEGIS’ organisational capacity
(finances, people, technology, and systems) to
cater to growing demands; (c) creating knowledge
products based on prior work that can help
accelerate the replication of successes across
geographies even without the presence of a CEGIS
team; and (d) deepening our engagement with
high-quality partner organisations to amplify
both their and our impact.
I would like to conclude this note by expressing
my deep gratitude to all of CEGIS’ supporters
and well wishers, and especially the many team
members who are dedicating their careers to
improving governance, and thereby contributing
to accelerating India’s development. We have
come a long way in the last five years, but in many
ways, we are just getting started. We look forward
to your continued support on this journey.
Prof. Karthik Muralidharan
Co-founder and Scientific Director, CEGIS;
Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics,
University of California, San Diego
Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States
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