COMMENTARY The rise and fall of India’s Government performance management system Prajapati Trivedi Indian School of Business In 2014, the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System (PMES) covered 80 departments in the Government of India and 800 Responsibility Centers (subordinate offices, attached offices, and autono- mous bodies) under these departments. Seventeen states of the Indian Union, cutting across political lines, were at various stages of implementing PMES, and it was hailed by many of India’s SAARC neighbors—Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Today, however, India has no formal system for government performance management and all per- formance reviews are done in the office of the Prime Minister in the old-fashioned way. The focus is not on the whole of department performance but only on projects within departments that are closer to Prime Minister’s heart. The story of the spectacular rise of performance management from 2009 until 2014 and its subsequent speedy demise offers valuable lessons for future reformers in democracies. Outside observers often marvel at the Indian Government. It is run by a bureaucracy that is often rated to be the worst in Asia. Yet India has a highly competitive civil service recruitment system and regularly recruits the crème de la crème of the available pool through a rigorous screening process. Today, around 1 million people apply for civil service exams at the federal level and only about 400 of them make it to the top services. Having taught the recent recruits recently, I can affirm that they are indeed as good as they come anywhere in the world. Thus, there is a consensus that Indian bureaucracy represents a classic case of good people caught in a bad system. Indian policy makers have been painfully aware of this dilemma for a very long time. Many Indian prime ministers have lamented poor implementation of their great ideas and blamed the failures on ineffective government machinery. A number of committees and commissions have been set up over time to find a solution to this problem. Many of these commissions and commit- tees were headed by civil servants, and their recommendations were themselves left to be imple- mented by those very people they were meant to reform. Consequently, most of these recommendations have gathered dust. In 2008 two landmark developments finally made a difference. The Second Administrative Reform Commission, a high-level commission headed by a chairman with the rank of a Cabinet Minister, sub- mitted its 10th report to the Government of India in November 2008. It argued strongly for the intro- duction of a Performance Management System for government departments in general, and performance agreements in particular. The report found that performance agreements were “the most common accountability mechanism in most countries that have reformed their public administration systems.” The Sixth Central Pay Commission also submitted a report in 2008 that strongly urged the Government of India to introduce a Performance-Related Incentive Scheme for government employees. Pay Commissions, usually headed by a retired Supreme Court Justice, are set up every 8–10 years by the Government of India to solicit advice on changes in salary structure of its government employees. Governance. 2017;1–5. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gove VC 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1 Received: 13 January 2017 | Accepted: 13 January 2017 DOI: 10.1111/gove.12278