Ministries are falling back on McKinsey. Harvard is quietly winning the battle

livemint.com:

The New Yorker wrote about the consultancy firm recently. “Escape from accountability is the most valuable service" the management consultancy provides, went on the article, referring to a former McKinsey employee’s description of it as “capital’s willing executioners".

While companies may want to lower accountability so as to “increase shareholder value", as The New Yorker article also said, why governments lean on such expertise is less obvious. But governments across the world do hire the storied consultancy firm.

In India, 16 ministries and departments in the central government blew up ₹500 crore in five years on outsourcing at least 308 crucial assignments to McKinsey and other multinational consultancy firms hiring consultancies, information made available under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, and reported by The Indian Express, has shown. The departments that cumulatively spent equivalent to salaries of about 300 IAS officers on these consultancies include civil aviation; public enterprises; electronics and information technology; health and family welfare; petroleum and natural gas; rural development, forest and climate change; tourism; administrative reforms and public grievances; promotion of industry and internal trade; coal, skill development and entrepreneurship; defence; and non-conventional energy resources; power; road transport and highways.

The assignments outsourced covered across-the-board activities, including "financial due diligence", "retainer for advisory service", "hiring technical consultants," and even "evaluation of nominations for e-governance awards", the information obtained under RTI showed. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Ernst & Young Global Limited