In his book The Broken Ladder, the political scientist and former officer of the Indian Administrative Service Anirudh Krishna is concerned with the problem of upward mobility among the poor in India. According to a 2011 measure employed by the Indian government, almost one-fourth of the Indian population lives under the poverty line. There is a great deal of debate over what criteria should be used for measuring poverty, and there are now a range of indicators employed by the Indian government, the World Bank, and development experts. But they generally agree that no matter how poverty in India is measured, it is declining. There are debates about whether this decline has occurred fast enough, given India’s rate of economic growth, and what the decline in poverty means given that there has not been a similar improvement on indicators of hunger or nutrition or access to health care. But the fact that there has been a decline suggests that there is some room for optimism: things are getting better.

Krishna’s book challenges or at least qualifies this optimistic assessment in two ways. He notes, first of all, that those who rise above the poverty line often do not get very far. In other words, to return to the title of the book, the ladder out of poverty is broken. The poor may ascend a rung or two, but then remain there, within or close to a zone of poverty. The book illustrates the broken ladder with the story of Keshu, a bright young man who was the first high school graduate from his village. Despite his abilities and his education, “things did not work out as he had hoped” (p. 2). He did not find a regular job and now survives by digging for sand used for construction. This is low paid, seasonal work, for which his education is irrelevant. It is also not a significant step up from the work his father does as a day labourer in a neighbouring city (p. 2). Second, some people move upward out of poverty while others move downward into it. The ladder, in other words, is not only broken but often also upside down. The decline in poverty in India, Krishna points out, is therefore a product, not of a general improvement in the material conditions of the poor, but of flows in opposite directions that cancel each other out.

Krishna relies on a compilation of disaggregated studies, including his own, to substantiate these points. The book would have been strengthened by more systematic and transparent data on upward mobility: after completing the book, I found myself wondering how many people faced restrictions on mobility, and how these restrictions varied across class and locality. But Krishna does the best he can with multi-locality studies, in both villages and towns, which cover several thousand respondents. Even if the precise extent and variation in upward mobility remains to be established, the book provides sufficient evidence to indicate that upward mobility is a significant problem in India that affects a large number of people.

The rest of the book offers an explanation for why upward mobility is restricted and how to improve it. Krishna argues that the main explanation for the blockage, other things being equal, is the “microclimate” in which the poor live. By this he means a combination of material and non-material factors. The material factors include, in particular, an educational infrastructure with easily accessible schools and the trained teachers. By non-material factors Krishna means attitudes, information, values, and beliefs which, he argues, are just as important and can prevent upward mobility even in the presence of the right infrastructure. To illustrate, he offers the example of Chandru, who did not pursue a college education despite a full scholarship because his family believed that higher education was “not for the likes of us” and there were no role models or counter-examples or information to contradict that belief (p. 22).

In proposing solutions, Krishna again focuses on microclimate—this time the microclimate of reform. The Indian state, he argues, is distant, and centralized and proposes uniform policies that do not fit well with local conditions. What is needed is an approach to policy that is proximate, localized, and flexible. He advocates the strengthening of what he calls “street level bureaucrats”—village-level patwaris (land registrars), village council secretaries, police constables, agricultural supervisors, and what he calls “last mile” institutions. He also advocates for a model of governance that incorporates local customs or that outsources tasks to institutions such as traditional village councils (p. 169).

Krishna’s focus on microclimates—and in particular, the “soft,” non-material aspects of a microclimate—is one of the most important and eloquent parts of the book. The emphasis on changing the beliefs of citizens about who they can be and who they can become recalls Amartya Sen’s (1999) capabilities approach to development and welfare, revisited here in very concrete ways. And the emphasis on a localized, flexible approach to development suggests an illuminating connection with James Scott’s (1999) critiques of the modern, universalizing state, arrived at via a very different route.

But in the end it is precisely the prescription for reforming the microclimate of development that deserves greater interrogation, not only by a reviewer, but also by the author. Krishna advocates the strengthening of street-level bureaucrats while glossing over the many ways in which street-level bureaucrats can and have contributed to the problem of reform through rent-seeking or other kinds of exploitative behaviour. Krishna acknowledges such behaviour, but does not fully engage with the problems it poses for his prescription. He simply asserts that it is a consequence of a “design weakness in the system” (p. 161) that can be neutralized by better training, motivation and citizen-centred institutions that enforce local accountability.

The Broken Ladder would have been strengthened by a systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of such institutions where they do exist. They have, for instance, been built into the design of the National Rural Employment Guarantee programme, as well as in panchayati raj (village self-government reform) in several states. Similarly, the book has a relatively uncritical approach to local customary institutions and practices, recommending that they be incorporated into local governance without fully engaging with the question of how these institutions can often magnify inequalities, or give new form to patriarchal or other socially conservative practices. Krishna notes that this possibility exists but dismisses it rather lightly: “Newspaper accounts have highlighted the monstrous judgments handed down on occasion by some traditional institutions. But these aren’t the only decisions they make, and they aren’t the only traditional institutions.” (p. 169). The Broken Ladder would have benefited from a more extended discussion of, and a more critical approach to, the local.