Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Private sector management consultants play an increasingly important role in public policy development and governance. This paper studies the nuances of consultant-government relations at the federal and city levels, and the impacts of this, using India’s smart cities policy as an empirical case.

Paper long abstract

As private sector management consultants become increasingly prominent policy actors, it is important to understand the ways in which they come to work within the public sector, the actual influence they have over policy ideas and approaches, and the kinds of impacts this participation has on development goals and on government capacity. The paper uses India’s smart cities policy as an empirical case. Given the intersection of digitalisation, urban governance, and the project-approach of the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) (2015-2025), this policy is a particularly interesting case where we see different ways in which management consultants have entered the policy arena, the roles they have played, and the extent to which urban governments have been hollowed out.

The central questions this paper answers are: what are the pathways by which consultants entered smart city development in India and how have they been able to establish themselves as policy actors therein? What are the impacts of this, especially on local governments? The paper builds on existing research, in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, and documentary analysis. It finds that consultant influence increases from the federal to the city level, and that, at least when it comes to the SCM, the federal government has played an outsized role in entrenching consultants. This paper directly contributes to this panel, especially its focus on institutional arrangements and the production of expertise. It also speaks to the conference’s wider theme on digital futures, shifting contours of power, and the framing of development in today’s world.