Department of Politics and Public Administration

M.phill Coursework Assignment Research Paper II

Title of the paper :

Study of Public Policy making in India : A theoretical framework.
---Tejashri Pratap Pratibha Kamble
M.Phill (2012-13)

Introduction
In a country like India, which is a land of diversity, where almost all
religions of the world are dwelling within the territory of India, with diverse
climatic differences and resources, issues like inequality, imbalance in growth,
conflicts, etc would be the picture of Indian society. Indian State through its Public
aims to bring change in society. Public policy aims to address issues of public
concern at large. Public policy is the most effective mechanism to bring change at
all levels in the society.
The paper focuses on the conceptual and application part of the public policy
in India with certain examples. The paper is divided in four parts:
i)
Public Policy a theoretical framework
ii)
Path followed by Public Policy
iii) Discussion on Impact of Public Policy making in India.
iv) Issues addressed by public policy in India
With a concluding remark on policy making in India.

Public Policy a theoretical framework

A Public Policy is a goal oriented course of action adopted and implemented
by the government bodies and officials in pursuit of certain objectives or goals of
public interest. Basically, Public Policies are: Goal oriented, Decision making
process, Governments collective action, Addresses public concerns, Interaction of
peoples demands with power structures.
As described by Larry Gerston, Public policy theory is the study or
discussion of public policy. Public policy itself includes any policies that are
concerned with the public, at the federal, state, or local government level. Public
policy theory involves observing, analyzing, and oftentimes comparing public
policy to theory, as opposed to actually participating in the creation of public
policy. Because theory is not equal to knowledge, or factual information, it is an
imperfect study often involving debate and sometimes controversy. (Reference :
Gerston N. Larry, 2009, Public Policy Making In a Democratic Society )
One way of describing a good policy-making process is one that is
committed to producing a high quality decisionnot any particular decision and
that invests any decision made with a high degree of legitimacy, power and
accuracy [Moore, 1998]. What features or characteristics should a policymaking
process have which, if present, would lead to high quality decisions?
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Path followed by Public Policy

Policy making is an art. A The path followed by public policy gives a clear picture
about the theoretical and application aspect of the policy. Also helps to understand
the basis of public Policy.

Fig. 1 The path of Policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. (Reference :

http://www.athenainfonomics.in/public-policy.html )

And to understand the basis of public policy one need to answer few
questions and they are : i) What is public policy? ii) Who makes policy? iii)
Who is affected by public policy? iv) Who influences public policy? Answers to
these questions would help us know the ingredients and the path that is followed
by public policy.
What is public policy? A public policy is basically a law or rule that is enforced
by any level of government, whether central, state, or local. Various tiers of
government also formulate a variety of schemes and programs. Public policy
includes: schemes, programs, sectoral policies, rules, regulations, laws, as well as
judicial policy-decisions.

Who makes policy? Its very much clear from the above discussion that public
policy is made by different tiers of government. Institutions that play a crucial role
in policy making are: Legislature, Executive, Cabinet and Cabinet secretariat,
Prime Minister and Prime Ministers Office, NDC and Planning Commission,
IAS, IPS and IFS officers, Judiciary. All the above mentioned institutions has a
unique role to play in the formulation of policy.
Who is affected by public policy? By penalizing some forms of behavior and
rewarding others, policies change the costs and benefits of different directions of
action. Policies can be thought of as rules of the game of everyday life. These
rules affect the way people choose to pursue their goals and thus influence the
combined, overall, and unintended results of everyones actions. Policies mainly
affect the individuals under the jurisdiction of the government that makes and
enforces the rules. However, as we shall see in a moment, who exactly is effected
by policies and how is not as clear and straightforward as you might expect

Discussion on Impact of Public Policy making in India.

There can certainly be incongruity as to what is the "right" policy in a given
sector, in a given situation. Because there are errors, changes or postponements in
policies, one cannot conclude that policy-making suffers from weakness. Success
is often the result of trial and error. Disagreements in a democratic society, are
both inevitable and healthy. Vigorous debate prior to policy-making and adaptation
in response to debate is good, not bad. Flexibility in policymaking to respond to
evolving exogenous factors is good, not bad. And the phenomenon of political
considerations intervening in decisions otherwise well taken, is inevitable in a
fractious but genuinely democratic polity like India. (Reference : Public policy
making in india: issues and remedies ,O.P. Agarwal & T.V. Somanathan)
As the example given about of the power of public policy in Social Change
&Public Policy by Parth J Shah is as follows: The Indian Forest Act classifies
bamboo as a tree. All the rules that apply to trees apply to bamboo and the Forest
Department controls its use. As a result, only some connected contractors have
access to forest bamboo. If it were classified as a grass, however, as it scientifically
is, then the bamboo would be out of the Forest Departments control. Tribals would
be able to access it as a resource to earn their livelihood. A large scale use of
bamboo would also save trees and timber, a tremendous environmental benefit. To
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bring about this policy change, CCS ran a campaign: Bamboo is Not a Tree.
What would be the impact of this small change in policy? It would help millions of
tribals all over the country whom we dont even know. It might save millions of
trees too. Thats the power of public policy .
This example clearly marks a significant remark on the tool or mechanism of
public policy and its impact. Hence for a country like India which is large,
populous and diverse as is intrinsically a more complex task than in a smaller
political unit. This makes us a study of the institutions which make policy all the
more important. Measured by economic growth or attainment of human
development objectives, India remains not only an underdeveloped country but one
which is usually regarded as an under-performer, which could do better.If it is
taken as given that India is an under-performer, the question then arises as to why
is this the case. This may be due to adopting the wrong public policies and poorly
implementing the right public policies.

Issues addressed by public policy in India

Poverty , Education, Health, Infrastructure, Energy, Rights, Gender, etc. are being
by framing schemes and programmes formulated by government of India. Based
on these issues there are certain types of public policy framework in India, they
are as follows :
Welfare & Development Public policies ( MGNREGA, Mid day Meal
Scheme, etc )
Regulatory Public policies (National Drug Policy, National Water Policy, etc )
Distributive & Re-distributive policies (National Mineral Policy, National
Electricity Policy, etc )
Amartya Sen, one of the chief proponents of the basic idea of human
development, argued that the state needed to roll back in areas where its presence
was uneconomical and unnecessary and increase policy attention and money in
areas pertaining to human development that needed a thrust. Prof Sen took the
interesting example of China where the success of economic reforms and record
levels of economic growth were made possible, because of and not in spite of, the
efforts of the 3 interventionist state prior to 1978 policy shifts under Deng Xiao
Ping.
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According to this argument, the pro-active public policy intervention in human

development enables the state to create a social and economic base to take
advantage of economic reforms and the opening up of markets. Investment in
human development and promotion of elementary education and health, improving
the status of women as well as improving the basic demographic indicators would
actually help in the long and medium term to reap the benefits of opening up of
markets and globalisation.
There was no contradiction between the rollback of the state in some areas and
increasing its policy intervention in others. These ideas come from one of the chief
proponents of human development and we are as yet unsure of their effectiveness
on the public policies of the Indian state. Surely, the arguments have drawn the
attention of the social-science community. (Reference : Politics and Public
Policies: Politics of Human Development in Uttar Pradesh, India by Shyam Singh
and V Anil Kumar)

A way forward
The public policies for human development and welfare were already
authorised by the Indian constitution. In India it is of utmost important that our
constitution should be the most basic guideline while formulating, implementing
and evaluating any public policies. As described in the preamble, Fundamental
Rights and Directive principles of state Policies which constitute the philosophy of
the constitution.
The social bases of the politic parties clearly read out the nature of public
policy making. Uncertainty of the social bases of political parties has stimulated
such trends in India. For example, positive discrimination is already present in the
Indian Constitution but the spirit and the aim of adopting the public policies to
benefit specific social sections to garner electoral support, and the politics of public
policies, pre-eminently public policies meant for better human development.

References
1. Gerston N. Larry, 2009, Public Policy Making In a Democratic Society (A
Guide to Civic Engagement), New Delhi, PHI.
2. Public policy making in india: issues and remedies ,O.P. Agarwal & T.V.
Somanathan, - http://floatingsun.net/udai/files/Agarwal-Somanathan.pdf,
accessed on 2nd May , 2013
3. Social Change &Public Policy, Parth J Shah- http://publicpolicyindia.in/ ,
accessed on 2nd May , 2013
4. http://ies.gov.in/pdfs/essay-by-deeparghya-mukherjee.pdf , accessed on 2nd
May , 2013.
5. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/
EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20208965~menuPK:435735~pagePK:148956~piP
K:216618~theSitePK:430367,00.html, accessed on 2nd May , 2013.
6. http://envfor.nic.in/divisions/ic/wssd/doc2/ch16.pdf, accessed on May 4,
2013.
7. http://ccs.in/ccsindia/pdf/lss7-social-change-and-public-policy.pdf accessed
on may 4, 2013
8. Politics and Public Policies: Politics of Human Development in Uttar
Pradesh, India by Shyam Singh and V Anil Kumar http://www.isec.ac.in/WP
%20287.pdf , accessed on may 4, 2013
9. http://www.athenainfonomics.in/public-policy.html , accessed on May 5,
2013.