With Nitish Kumar’s exit, Bihar’s Sushasan must go beyond top-down

A core insight from our survey, a joint project by LSE and the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), highlights that earlier reforms were largely logistical (building roads, expanding electricity access) and therefore easier to monitor from above. However, Sushasan 2.0 involves improving difficult‑to‑monitor public services such as elementary schools, health centres, anganwadis, and right‑to‑work schemes. These require reforms that cannot simply be ordered from the top and improving the utilisation of existing resources (like teachers and school buildings).

Improving utilisation requires understanding the human side of service delivery. Across Bihar, frontline workers provide essential public services. How do they feel about their work? What hinders them? Our findings show that while frontline staff are generally motivated and find their work fulfilling, many feel burdened by repetitive tasks or rigid rules. At the managerial level, block and district officers overwhelmingly see rule enforcement as their primary responsibility. This aligns with earlier findings by Akshay Mangla that India’s bureaucracy often emphasises narrow rule‑following, hindering effective service delivery.

In our study, a large majority of managers expressed the belief that, unless closely monitored, subordinates will be lazy. This points to a deeper problem in how the system views its own frontline workers. Instead of being trusted to make decisions, teachers, nurses, and local officials are often given little autonomy. It reflects a broader pattern identified by Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Michael Walton, who argue that there is a widespread lack of trust in India’s government workforce by the country’s elite. Frontline officials are often seen as inefficient or corrupt, which leads to more rules and stricter oversight. This creates a cycle: When workers are not trusted or empowered, they are less likely to take initiative, reinforcing the very perceptions that led to tight control in the first place. As Bihar prepares for new leadership, this presents an opportunity. Two key lessons from global evidence stand out for the next CM. First, surveillance-based strategies have shown limited success in improving effort where performance is difficult to measure. Second, effective alternatives do exist. Approaches that combine trust, professional autonomy, and supportive supervision have shown better outcomes.

The central challenge for Sushasan 2.0 is therefore: How can the system be redesigned to encourage greater effort from frontline workers? Our study offers an important clue as nearly two-thirds of frontline staff say they would be willing to work harder if their colleagues did the same. Effort is shaped not just by rules, but by shared norms and expectations. A sense of purpose, professional pride, and the satisfaction of serving others are especially critical in roles where effort is hard to observe, yet they remain largely overlooked in policy design. To make public services truly work for Bihar’s citizens, reforms must be seen as part of a sustained, long-term process. As Martin J Williams argues in Reform as Process, reforms that focus narrowly on formal rules and are implemented as discrete projects often fall short. More durable change comes from continuous reform efforts that create space for internal dialogue, learning, and adaptation within the bureaucracy. Over time, such processes can reshape norms, build trust, and enable the state to function more effectively.

Deep reform requires empowering those within the system, drawing on support from institutions within the public system such as BIPARD and IIM Bodh Gaya rather than consultancies with their shallow and generic reform suggestions, and prioritising intrinsic motivation and non‑formal aspects of work. Nitish Kumar has already shown that sustained governance reforms can set a state on a different path. If Bihar’s next chief minister can build on this foundation, there is a real opportunity to leave behind a legacy that reshapes the state’s development trajectory for decades to come.

Gupta is associate professor and member secretary, ADRI. Berliner is professor of Political Science and Public Policy, LSE. Haus is PhD candidate, LSE