'The mechanism itself is straightforward: the government identifies a social problem, for example, learning loss in public schools or maternal mortality in a lagging district. Instead of contracting a service provider and paying for activity regardless of what happens, it commits to paying only when measurable outcomes are achieved. Independent evaluators verify results, private investors or philanthropies fund the initial work, and if the programme succeeds, the government pays. If it fails, the investor bears the loss.'

Arijit Dash and Soniya Gupta Rawal, PhD scholars at the University of Cambridge, and Shivam Rawal, a Fulbright Master’s scholar at Columbia University, write