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2.1.5
Some Considerations on the Politics of Policy Making
 
Prof. Ramabrahmam (Dept. of Political Science, Hyderabad Central University) 
 
I wish to bring an academic perspective on how policy science or public policy is taught in traditional conventional universities and how it is still far away from the ground realities even though nobody prevents us from enriching the curriculum of the discipline in which we are trained. We have been continuously developing it. But I am quite enriched by the presentations here.
 
While I appreciate the experiences of civil society groups, in implementation of the policy, I wish to say that public policies are not policies in the sense that they are generally understood by the group here. In an elementary way policy is defined as whatever governments choose to do, or not to do. While they have decided not to associate civil society groups up until 1991, they have decided to associate civil society groups after 1991.
 
Much of the academic literature in public policy development tells us that public policies are formulated by political parties. A manifesto of a political party constitutes political agenda for the party, which it intends to translate to implementable public policy. Thus all policies are formulated by uninitiated unprofessional people and no policy can be called as public policy as such.

 

If we take this conventional sense of public policy, none of the things that we have discussed here satisfy the academic criteria of being called a public policy.
 
Let us take the statement which Sreekumar made this morning that India should become self-reliant in the energy sector. That is not sufficient to qualify as policy. Policy would be when all agencies are actually mobilised to generate the number of megawatts that is required. Currently, after fixing an unachievable goal, there is an effort to mobilise agencies. The Planning Commission talks something, the public policy experts talk another, the Cabinet Secretary takes a different view, and state governments have a different view. Meanwhile civil society groups take an altogether different view, and environmentalists have their own way of intervening. There is no effort by any agency to takes a holistic perspective or what a majority of people feel about it.
 
There are four or five ways of understanding public policy. Firstly they are formulated by political parties. The bureaucracy decides the inputs and modalities of implementation. Interest and associational groups play a big part in choices and options. The media plays an important role in legitimising a policy.
 
The elite approach recognizes that no policy is public in the sense that it is mainly elite sections which influence it most. Whichever way you see, policy statements are just intentions of a political party, and they should not be confused with public policy. In this approach we will examine the different interest groups and also pressure groups and how they change the course of the policy.
 
The other approach is the institutional approach which examines the role of the Parliament, State Assemblies, media and civil society as institutions. The Constitution of India defined roles for agencies like the Centre, the State, and after the 73rd and 74th Amendment, the Panchayats and urban bodies, in policy formulation at different levels.
 
Today there is a lot of talk about governance and civil society. Apart from government, we are told that in policy formulation we should take note of the contributions made by civil society groups in modifying or evolving a new policy. The dominant discourse in governance theory therefore leaves a lot of space for civil society. However, civil society groups have their own problems in articulating their standpoint. Previous speakers have indicated how their reports have been dismissed by the bureaucracy as being too academic or not ‘implementable’. The problem within the new discourse therefore is not the content of policy, but in determining how that contribution is seen, evaluated and acted upon.
 
Policy development is a sub area of public policy and it involves studies of implementation of policy, such that the effect of policy is seen, measured and understood, so that mid-term and regular corrections can be made.
 
So what is the role of civil society in this? And how should they intervene, because ultimately the entire policy is decided by the 78 top policy makers.  How do you influence a process which generally ignores studies, local realities, and even university inputs?  I have as many complaints, as the civil society, on how universities are marginalised in the policy context.

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