Job Description

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGIS' vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning

CEGIS' solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organised into vertical teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualise the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organisation to function smoothly.

The CEGIS Journey: Building on Momentum to Catalyse National Development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating India's development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the Vertical – Strategic Public Finance (SPF)

The Strategic Public Finance (SPF) team at CEGIS works at the intersection of evidence and governance to strengthen the quality of public financial management across Indian states. The team's core problem statement is that state governments often lack the data infrastructure, analytical capacity, and institutionalised processes to make evidence-based fiscal decisions leading to inefficiencies in revenue mobilisation, budget planning, and public expenditure.

The SPF team's theory of change is anchored in institutionalising data-driven decision-making within key government departments by building robust data systems, analytical capacity, and repeatable solution stacks that enable better goal-setting, monitoring, and strategic resource allocation.

SPF operationalises this through three core solution stacks that together address the full fiscal lifecycle:

1. Quality of Expenditure Stack (QoE) - Focuses on improving efficiency of public spending through diagnostics, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare spending through better targeting and strengthening outcome linkages between expenditure and service delivery.
2. Revenue Stack - Aims to strengthen state's revenue value chains through analytics, process improvements in revenue administration, compliance nudges, and institutional capacity building to enhance states' revenue ecosystems.
3. Macrofiscal Analytics Stack - Focuses on strengthening fiscal strategy through better visibility into economic activity through an integrated view of growth, employment, and productivity by combining data on labour supply, firm demand, and land and property markets to inform urban planning and revenue potential.

Across these stacks, SPF engagements typically involve:

• Partnering with government stakeholders & donors in designing, testing, and scaling revenue optimisation and expenditure efficiency interventions, for example, budget analysis, expenditure tracking, and performance-linked reforms.

• Supporting state finance departments to build in-house analytical capacity and enable data driven interventions.

This stack-based approach allows SPF to address fiscal challenges in an integrated manner - linking revenue, expenditure, and macroeconomic insights to enable more strategic and sustainable public finance management.

A Program Manager owns the day-to-day operationalisation of Strategic Public Finance projects - driving execution, data management, analysis, stakeholder coordination, and internal tracking on the ground. They translate project plans into action, ensure meticulous data handling, drive insightful analysis, and maintain consistent momentum across deliverables and timelines. The Program Manager plays a central role in getting work done and advancing organizational objectives.

Roles & Responsibilities

Project Management

• Drives day-to-day execution of project plans, ensuring tasks are operationalised on the ground and progress is tracked against milestones set.

• Manages the team's research efforts by delegating tasks, reviewing outputs, and ensuring the quality and rigor of outputs.

• Identifies execution-level risks as they emerge (e.g. data delays, stakeholder unavailability, on-ground bottlenecks) and resolves or escalates them properly.

• Tracks team bandwidth and resourcing needs to keep project execution on schedule.

• Operationalises project launches and conceptualisation on the ground, in line with SPF primary objectives.

• Collaborates with team members to develop impactful knowledge products, such as policy notes, analysis reports, and frameworks and contributes to knowledge sharing.

Analysis, Interpretation & Quality Control

• Applies technical approaches tailored to the specific capacities and needs of government counterparts, in collaboration with solution and delivery teams.

• Leads analysis and interpretation of information, translating data into actionable insights.

• Monitors global best practices and research, aiding the team in adapting these methodologies in the outputs.

• Ensures quality control of outputs by regular, thorough and structured reviews.

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

• Contributes to the preparation of proposals and decks for donors and new states/departments.

• Synthesizes stakeholders' feedback to develop strategic communication strategies.

• Creates presentations, reports, and dashboards for diverse stakeholders.

• Interprets and presents data effectively, helping to convey meaningful insights to internal and external stakeholders.

• Engages with state teams on a regular basis and participates in government stakeholder interactions as required to present concepts and advocate for impactful initiatives.

• Builds and maintains working relationships with public officials, government departments, and other stakeholders to facilitate collaboration on SPF projects.

Data Management & Analysis

• Facilitates access to administrative data from relevant government line departments, reviews them using a prescribed template, and conducts analysis as required.

• Ensures strict compliance with data quality protocols, including auditing enumerators, supervising data collection, and performing data quality audits.

• Manages all primary, secondary, and administrative data by strictly following data management and security protocols and creating standardization of protocols for projects.

• Leads/undertakes quantitative and qualitative analysis to generate high-quality and evidence-based insights

Knowledge Management & Documentation

• Documents and codifies project methodologies, frameworks, and analytical approaches into reusable templates for use across states.

• Maintains a structured repository of state-specific learnings, data sources, and stakeholder context for internal handover and onboarding.

• Identifies relevant external research, government circulars, and comparative state practices, and incorporates them into ongoing project work.

• Participates in cross-team knowledge-sharing sessions (e.g. internal seminars, post-project retrospectives) to disseminate lessons learned across team(s).

Education & Experience

• Master's degree in economics, statistics, public policy, engineering, social science, or related fields from a prestigious institution.

• 5 to 8 years of relevant work experience, including hands-on research, quantitative analysis, and client-facing exposure (including with government entities). Exceptional candidates who exceed the prescribed range may be considered for the Senior Manager role basis an evaluation of their demonstrated capabilities, sectoral expertise, and role fit.

• Demonstrated experience working on prior projects in public finance, social welfare, or development sectors, ideally involving direct engagement with government departments or public sector institutions.

• Demonstrated expertise in quantitative data management and analysis, utilizing advanced tools such as STATA, R, or Python programming extensively.

• Strong written & verbal communication skills including report writing, presentation design, and policy documentation; proficiency in MS Office and related tools

Required Competencies

a) Domain Competencies

• Understands the functioning of Indian state governments. Aware of the reform landscape — knows the challenges Finance and Planning departments face and what governance reform looks like in practice.

• Familiarity with public finance areas (such as taxation, revenues, expenditures, budgets, debt management) is a plus.

b) Functional Competencies

• Exceptional problem-solving and strategic thinking abilities, with a track record of formulating innovative solutions to complex challenges.

• Strong organizational and planning skills, adept at setting priorities, establishing timelines, and consistently meeting deadlines in dynamic environments.

• Ability to thrive under pressure, managing competing priorities while upholding meticulous attention to detail and delivering exceptional outcomes consistently.

• Capacity to build working relationships with partner organizations, including some prior experience engaging with Indian state governments.

• Flexibility to seamlessly transition between various projects and swiftly immerse oneself in new sectors.

c) Behavioural Competencies

• Deep commitment to enhancing the effectiveness of Indian states, coupled with a firm alignment with the organization's theory of change and impact.

• Supportive attitude – takes responsibility for outputs and follows through proactively without constant supervision

• Multi-tasking/ time management – manages multiple concurrent state engagements and competing deadlines without compromising quality or missing commitments to stakeholders

• Learning agility – curious, open to feedback, and willing to adapt approaches in dynamic reform environments

• Collaboration – actively listens, values and respects diverse perspectives, and works effectively within cross-functional teams

• Stakeholder sensitivity — understands the political and institutional context of government engagements and navigates day-to-day interactions with tact and professionalism.

• Cross-team awareness — maintains working awareness of other CEGIS teams relevant to the immediate project; proactive cross-team synergy-building sits outside the core scope of this role.

Role Logistics

• Location: Bhubaneswar, Odisha

• Language: Proficiency in English (written and spoken) is required; knowledge of local language(s) is desirable

• Travel: must be open to intermittent travel to other States

Pre-reads for the Application Process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview

• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024

• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.

• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharan's book Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS' work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3

• Karthik Muralidharan: India's Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode

• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast