The third edition of the IDFC Institute Dialogues was held in Goa in June 2018. It brought together a small and carefully-curated group of “pracademics” to freely discuss some of the thorniest development challenges in India, in an off-the-record format. This year's Dialogues was co-chaired by Rajiv Lall (Founder MD and CEO, IDFC Bank), Nandan Nilekani (Co-Founder, Infosys, and Former Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India) and Arvind Subramanian (former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India).

The event was attended by a mix of academics, policy makers, bureaucrats, senior police officials, and businesspeople. Attendees included Hardeep Singh Puri (Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, Independent Charge, Government of India), Jayant Sinha (Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Government of India), James Robinson (University Professor, University of Chicago), Joaquim Levy (MD and Group CFO, World Bank; Former Finance Minister of Brazil), Anna Kinberg Batra (Member, Swedish Parliament, and Former Leader, Swedish Moderate Party), Angela Hawken (Professor of Public Policy, NYU Marron Institute), Rajeev Gowda (Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha), Jay Panda (Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha), Manvendra Singh (Member of Legislative Assembly, Rajasthan), Nandini Piramal (Executive Director, Piramal Enterprises), Rohini Nilekani (Founder-Chairperson, Arghyam), Kiran Kumar Grandhi (Corporate Chairman, GMR Group), Adil Zainulbhai (Chairman, Quality Council of India), Russell Low (CEO, Freedom to Create), and Shailesh Pathak (CEO,  L&T Infrastructure Development Projects).

This year’s event focused on state capacity and institutional reform. Presentations and table discussions covered themes such as urbanisation, data protection, federalism, and innovation in policing, among others, with special focus on implementation challenges. In the coming months, we will help implement some of the ideas that were incubated at the event.