Maximum government, minimum governance

Book review of The Gated Republic: India's Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions

John Kenneth Galbraith spoke of the “secession of the successful” and The Gated Republic  focuses on just that but in the Indian context. The book demonstrates with copious examples how private markets take over when the state fails and often do so imperfectly, though omnisciently. Shankkar Aiyar asks, and correctly so, whether the government must raise the following questions, at each step of the way: (a) Do we need to do this? (b) Do we need to run this? (c) Do we need to own this? He argues that the “creative inertia” of both the civil service and politicians prevents