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Paper short abstract

Corporate-funded fellowships place young professionals inside Indian state offices, embedding corporate logics in everyday governance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the study shows how these programmes shape expertise, influence state practice, and raise questions about accountability.

Paper long abstract

Corporate-funded fellowship programmes have become a prominent feature of India's development landscape, positioning young professionals within state departments and district administrations. Presented as temporary capacity-building interventions, these programmes have evolved into enduring institutional arrangements through which corporate foundations actively shape the state's governance practices. This presentation examines how fellowship models—supported by India's largest corporate philanthropies—function as sites where development professionals are produced and where the boundaries between public authority and private expertise are continually negotiated.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across multiple state–philanthropy partnerships in India, I trace the everyday work of fellows embedded within state systems. These young professionals occupy ambiguous positions—neither fully state actors nor external consultants. Through their routine practices, corporate rationalities emphasising efficiency, data-driven governance, and measurable impact become integrated into bureaucratic processes, framed as neutral technical improvements. I examine how practices of data collection, monitoring, and evidence generation become central to claims of expertise, shaping what counts as legitimate knowledge and how development is to be understood by state systems.

The presentation interrogates what happens when capacity building becomes permanent infrastructure rather than transitional support. As state departments grow reliant on fellows' presence, questions emerge about whose knowledge counts, and how dependencies on private expertise reshape democratic accountability. I examine how these programmes structure pathways into development work, transforming both the professionals who move through them and the state institutions that absorb their labour.