Across India, state governments are increasingly responsible for solving complex development challenges, such as improving student learning outcomes, strengthening health systems and accelerating climate action. In education, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 established universal Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) as a national priority, while the NIPUN Bharat Mission provided a clear implementation framework.
Yet experience across states has shown that policy intent and financial allocations, while necessary, are not sufficient. Outcomes ultimately hinge on the quality of execution within state systems, particularly at the district and block levels, where policies are translated into action. This is where many large-scale reforms falter: not because the “what” is unclear, but because the “how” is uneven.
As states grappled with this execution challenge, a clear need emerged for a new kind of capacity – dynamic, high-calibre professionals who could work from within government systems to diagnose bottlenecks, coordinate across stakeholders and sustain momentum on priority reforms. State fellowships have increasingly emerged as a response to this gap.
Why State Fellowships Matter
When designed well, state fellowships do more than add manpower. By embedding young professionals directly within government structures, they act as catalytic enablers—strengthening governance, improving last-mile delivery and accelerating reform without creating parallel systems. Their value lies in positioning professionals at the intersection of policy intent, implementation realities and community needs.
This thinking shaped the Government of Madhya Pradesh’s decision to design the MP NIPUN Professionals (MPNP) Fellowship, India’s first state fellowship dedicated exclusively to implementing the FLN mission at scale.
By 2023, Madhya Pradesh had already put in place many of the essential inputs required for FLN reform: curriculum alignment, teaching learning materials, teacher training programs and assessment systems. The harder challenge lay ahead, ensuring that these inputs translated into consistent classroom practice across 52 districts, thousands of schools and tens of thousands of classrooms.
The state’s response was deliberate: instead of creating an external consultancy or a parallel program management unit, Madhya Pradesh chose to strengthen execution from within. From the outset, the fellowship was designed to deliver both institutional impact and leadership development.
Designing a fellowship as a system enabler at Scale
Institutionalised in 2023, the MPNP Fellowship placed one trained professional in each district, supported by a dedicated state financial investment and an academic partnership with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). But the program’s success lay less in its size than in its design choices.
First, hiring was treated as a core design choice, not an operational afterthought. From over 3,600 applicants, only 52 fellows were selected with an acceptance rate of roughly ~1.5%. Beyond academic credentials, the selection process emphasised analytical ability, on-ground orientation and a demonstrated commitment to public service. This ensured that the fellowship attracted professionals capable of navigating ambiguity, engaging constructively with government systems and staying grounded in field realities.
Second, institutional placement was non-negotiable. NIPUN Professionals (NPs) were embedded within district systems, working closely with CEOs–Zila Panchayats, District Project Coordinators, DIET principals, block officials and cluster mentors. This positioning ensured legitimacy, access to decision-makers and daily proximity to implementation challenges, allowing fellows to influence execution.
Third, role clarity was prioritised over role overload. The fellowship was not conceived as a general support function. High-impact problem statements were translated into district-level projects, with clear ownership and accountability. Fellows were expected to strengthen existing systems and processes, not substitute for them.
Finally, onboarding and continuous support were built into the model. Robust onboarding familiarised fellows with state priorities, administrative structures and district realities, enabling faster integration and credibility with officials. Ongoing administrative guidance from senior bureaucrats was complemented by technical mentoring from partners such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Central Square Foundation, ensuring that fellows could navigate complex systems while maintaining analytical rigour.
From the outset, the fellowship was designed to deliver a dual dividend: immediate institutional impact for the state and long-term leadership development for a cadre of professionals deeply grounded in public systems.
What Changed on the Ground
Large-scale reforms rarely fail for lack of intent or design; they falter when systems struggle to execute consistently across districts, respond to field realities and sustain momentum. In Madhya Pradesh, two shifts proved critical for execution at scale: stronger governance discipline and tighter feedback loops between classrooms and decision-makers. Over the course of the MPNP Fellowship, these shifts became visible, shaped by broader state efforts, with the fellowship playing a catalytic role.
Governance processes across districts became more regular, structured and data-informed over time.
Review meetings were conducted with greater consistency, with 83% of district reviews held regularly and block-level compliance improving from 52% in 2023 to 82% in 2024. Nearly 88% of reviews followed standardised protocols, helping move discussions away from ad-hoc updates toward action-oriented problem-solving. Fellows supported district teams in institutionalising review calendars, standard formats and follow-up mechanisms, complementing existing departmental systems and reinforcing a shared operating rhythm across districts.
Alongside this, greater emphasis was placed on using evidence to guide decisions. Fellows worked with district teams to strengthen dashboards and track actionables. By 2024, 79% of district review meetings systematically followed up on actions from previous discussions, improving continuity and accountability. This shift mattered for scale: when governance relies less on individual leadership styles and more on institutional processes, reforms become more resilient to personnel changes and better able to sustain momentum over time.
At the same time, stronger feedback loops ensured that improving instructional quality remained the central objective for all stakeholders. Field engagement was a deliberate design choice of the fellowship. Since July 2023, fellows conducted over 3,600 classroom visits and more than 1,400 joint school visits with mentors, helping surface implementation gaps and contextual challenges that could be fed back into district planning and reviews. During this period, mentors achieved 75% of their monthly school-visit targets and at least 60% of schools received a mentoring visit within six months.
Technology supported this connection between classrooms and decision-making. With facilitation from CSF, the state developed Shiksha MP, an FLN-focused mobile application used by over 6,000 mentors across state, district, block and cluster levels to document classroom practices. NIPUN Professionals supported mentor onboarding and adoption, with over 60% of mentors using the app for more than 1.5 hours per visit, suggesting sustained, meaningful engagement.
Local micro-innovations complemented system-level reforms by strengthening community engagement. Within the governance framework, several NIPUN Professionals launched small, district-specific initiatives to build FLN awareness and increase parental and community involvement in children’s learning. Examples include ‘Apna Classroom’ in Ashoknagar, which developed model classrooms to improve student engagement and strengthen community ownership; ‘Baal Chaupal’ in Sehore, which formalised parent–teacher interactions and encouraged sustained parental involvement; and the Saturday Project in Jhabua, which worked through existing NRLM structures to mobilise mothers and expand community support for schooling. ‘Seeti Bajao Bacche Bulao’ in Narmadapuram targeted improved attendance in government primary schools. These efforts were local and district-led, but they demonstrate a broader point: when districts are given room to act within a shared mission framework, they can strengthen last-mile engagement without weakening the core governance model.
By linking regular reviews with real-time classroom insights and allowing districts to lead locally, the MPNP program enabled the system to move closer to continuous improvement, where learning from the field informs planning, governance responds in real time and reforms remain grounded at scale. As shared by Vigya Jain, MP- NIPUN professional from Vidisha, “the NIPUN professionals program gave me front row tickets to see how policies are designed, how they are implemented at the district level and how departments collaborate to deliver the benefits of the mission to the last child.”
Impact Beyond the Fellowship
Cumulatively, these changes strengthened the last-mile delivery of NIPUN interventions. Tighter monitoring, faster resolution of material bottlenecks and consistent follow-up improved execution reliability. The MPNP Fellowship also produced a clear demonstration effect. Madhya Pradesh’s approach has informed the design of similar district-level FLN fellowships in other states, including Odisha, showing that embedded professional capacity can improve mission delivery without creating parallel structures or weakening state systems.
Four design principles for state fellowships that work:
Madhya Pradesh’s experience offers several lessons for other states considering similar models:
- Legitimacy flows from senior leadership, but last-mile impact is built in districts. State-level buy-in unlocks momentum while district anchoring determines whether reforms stick. Fellowships create lasting value only when fellows are integrated into district governance, given formal standing in delivery routines and positioned to strengthen existing roles rather than function as a parallel workforce.
- Execution at scale requires clear mandates and data discipline to drive behavioural change. Execution improves when responsibilities are explicit from district to school and progress is reviewed through fixed routines. Defined problem statements, owners, standard agendas and action-point tracking move governance from periodic reporting to repeatable problem-solving. Fellowships add value when they institutionalise these habits so delivery runs on cadence, not individual drive.
- Field proximity is a strategic design choice. Regular engagement with classrooms and frontline actors must be built into the model. Strong feedback loops between field observations and decision-makers keep implementation responsive, prevent dilution at scale and support institutionalisation beyond individual champions.
- Continuity allows institutional memory to accumulate and reforms to stick. Fellowships deliver durable impact only when their functions are built into system processes, so the work continues beyond the first few cohorts.
From Ambition to Outcomes
Fellows are not merely additional human resources; they are catalysts of change when positioned thoughtfully. The MP NIPUN Professionals Fellowship demonstrates what is possible when clear mission alignment, strong leadership and grounded execution come together.
As India pursues universal foundational learning and broader state-led reforms, strengthening and scaling such fellowships may be one of the most effective ways to convert ambitious policy goals into durable, system-wide outcomes – one district and one classroom, at a time.