🎙️Episode Details
Guest: Karthik Muralidharan
Title: Accelerating India's Development
Guest Host: Marsha Vande Berg
Producer: Sam Fu
Recorded: Tue Oct 21, 2025 · 62 minutes
In Episode 74 of The Hale Report®, guest host Marsha Vande Berg speaks with Karthik Muralidharan, Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at UC San Diego, and founder of the Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS).
They discuss his acclaimed new book, Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance, and explore how improving state capacity—not simply increasing spending—can drive more equitable growth and opportunity across India. And beyond India, the lessons for other emerging economies. Their discussion touches on the challenges of decentralization, public-private balance, and India’s place in the shifting global economy.
The conversation also highlights how these lessons extend beyond India to other emerging economies facing similar governance challenges.
🎙️Guest Host
Marsha Vande Berg
Marsha Vande Berg is a thought leader with expertise in international business, public administration and global affairs. Her emphasis is Asia Pacific markets, governance, sustainability and technology.
📍San Francisco
🎤 Key Moments
❝ The return on investment of better governance and state capacity is often ten times higher than simply spending more money.
❝ It’s not about telling India what to do—it’s about synthesizing an argument about development that is globally relevant.
❝ India’s democracy is a great moral triumph, but its expectations have raced far ahead of its capacity.”
❝ You can deliver a lot more for public welfare by focusing on regulation that makes markets work better—for both public and private actors.
❝ The government should be center-left in goals but center-right in means—compassion in heart, efficiency in head.
🔑 Takeaways
In this wide-ranging conversation with Marsha Vande Berg, Karthik Muralidharan challenges long-held assumptions about how economic progress happens in developing democracies.
He argues that better governance, not just faster growth, is the key to lifting millions into sustainable prosperity. India’s federal structure, he explains, gives its states both the opportunity and the responsibility to innovate.
By improving state capacity with data, incentives, and accountability, India can deliver more effective education, health, and social services.
His message extends beyond India: building capable, evidence-driven governments may be the defining development challenge of the 21st century.
👤 More About Our Guest
Karthik Muralidharan is the Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, and founder of the Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS).
His research focuses on education, health, and the economics of governance, combining rigorous field experiments with practical institutional reform.
Karthik’s recent book is a serious and important read for anyone who wants to understand India’s rise. Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (Viking, 2024), has been widely praised for redefining how policymakers think about state capacity and inclusive growth. Educated at Harvard and MIT, he represents a new generation of economists bridging the gap between scholarship and nation-building.
Follow him: on X @karthik_econ and on LinkedIn.
📚 Influences
At the close of the episode, Marsha asked the Hale Report signature bookend question: “Who would you most like to have dinner with, in this world or the next?”
Karthik Muralidharan chose Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space program. He explained that Sarabhai embodied the balance he himself strives for: “scholarly standards of global excellence while being deeply committed to institution-building for India”.
Karthik said he would love to spend an evening learning from him about the broader motivations and life lessons behind that journey. Economists are after all, explorers too.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or right here on Substack
