Policy Design Failures in India: A Case Study Approach

Public policy serves as the principal mechanism through which modern states attempt to address economic, social, and political challenges. In India, however, the ambitious scope of public policy frequently collides with the realities of weak institutional capacity, socio-economic diversity, and uneven implementation structures. While Indian policies are often intellectually sophisticated and technologically ambitious, many fail to achieve their intended outcomes due to structural flaws in policy design, implementation deficits, and political legitimacy crises. This paper examines the recurring patterns of policy failure in India through three major case studies: the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the 2020 Farm Laws, and Demonetization (2016). Using the framework of design failure, implementation failure, and political failure, the paper argues that Indian policymaking suffers from excessive centralization, technological overconfidence, and inadequate accountability mechanisms. These failures collectively produce a “design-reality gap” in which policies appear theoretically sound on paper but collapse during implementation. The paper concludes by recommending decentralized co-creation, pilot-based policymaking, and agile governance systems to improve policy effectiveness in India.