Public Policy: What, Why and How--II

“He who determines what politics is about runs the country, because the definition of alternatives is the choice of conflicts, and the choice of conflicts allocates power” --E.Schattschneider

 Public policy attributes its validity to the existence of domain of life that is not private or purely individual but held in common. An effective public policy requires avoiding narrow focus and drawing from various approaches and disciplines. Since initially public policy was rendered to improve delivery of services, it adopted one-way approach of limiting the effectiveness and efficiency of services there by improving democratic setup of individuals as well.

The democratic setup itself now demands more reinvigorating and reforming of governance pattern to efficiently design a policy.

 Policy making if considered as a moral value is idealized to keep alive the pluralism of authority and control to prevent oligarchic tendency to crop up thereby concentration of power in few hands. Public policy adopts various approaches and can be termed as a device to move social system from the past to the future. Past policies often perpetuate themselves into present and future policies. The present obstacles are obstacles because the past policies either overlooked it or failed to address it.

Considering the example of nepotism –by which employment opportunity was provided to near and dear ones out of turn, was actually a part of government employment policy till 1970’s where government employment went straight to family members it was then justified as security provided by government. Later it was never addressed and during the period of 1980s it was major cause of bulging of government with over-excess employees in various sectors. The maintenance cost was much more than revenue earned in the sector. It was a major reason of financial deficit, which later led to a crisis.

 Post crisis in 1990s “lean the government” was major strategy in India where “golden handshakes” like policy were adopted and many non-efficient government controlled avenues were either closed or sold off. Then till present times it has been observed that present day managerial employment strategy has again adopted the principle of nepotism in different way by using "letters of reference and recommendation”. It can be called as a parallel to nepotism but as the major managerial employment policies are based on “Hire and Fire” principle there is a safety lining.

Presently, the global socio-economic framework interacts with the domestic economic process and the political agenda on policies pursued by governments of nations. The success of nation states in policy performance is now being increasingly influenced by forces and factors outside the national boundaries.

In India the policy planning is done by Planning commission and it forms the major centre of policy design and analysis. Although various other parts influence policy making we would consider Planning Commission the major body of Policy- making.

 Indian policy-making has political, social, economic considerations while being designed and finally leads to political, social, economic implications too. Policy results are attenuated by effective policy monitoring factors. Eventually designing policies those have certain observable standards only. Most of the time these standards cannot be generalized as pan-India which makes the policy result also invalid for the same. It is thus change in approach and re consideration of standards affiliated to particular geography of country can bring in gusto in Policy results too.

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Abhilash Mohapatra not only thinks about India, but he is damn serious to contribute fruitfully in future.