PUBLIC POLICY

Burhanuddin H Dahodwala PG- Operations 15 1 What is public policy? Public policy is an attempt by a government to address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions pertinent to the problem at hand. Numerous issues can be addressed by public policy including crime, education, foreign policy, health, and social welfare.

2 Who are the actors of public policy? Main categories of actors in the policy process: Official actors statutory or constitutional responsibilities.

1. Legislative

In democracies, elected representatives receive a mandate from the electorate to shape and give content to public policies. This includes the mandate to advance public views on the legislation and policy process. Political leaders often use public speeches, media debates or political campaigns to raise issues. This mobilises mass support for issues. Once this mass based support for issues exists, it becomes very difficult not to address them.

2. Executive

The executive branch can be considered in two parts: the administration, staff, and appointees; and the bureaucracy. Career public managers are both receivers and manufactures of policy problems. They have considerable power to determine what goes into the policy agenda.

3. Judiciary Courts have the ability to interpret legislative and executive actions: judicial review. Courts are the weakest because their authority rests on the legitimacy of the law and their ability to argue their case. Legislatures and executives initiate public policy, while courts react to the practical effects of such policies.

Unofficial actors participation with no explicit legal authority.

1. Interest groups

Pluralism dictates that interest groups have collective strength and the capacity to mobilise their members at relatively short notice. Membership of interest groups is dictated by the desire to access the policy agenda. Hypothetically, interest groups exist as long as issues are not formally on the governments agenda or are not receiving priority attention once on the agenda.

2. Media

The news media are important actors in the policy process. Newspapers National versus regional versus local. TV is the central news medium. Older population, networks; younger population, cable news. Entertainment programming can be equally important. Movies, TV, videogames.

Medias primary function in policy process is agenda-setting. Media coverage correlates with institutional attention.

3 Give few examples of public policy? Which one you like? Which one you want to criticize government and on what basis? Examples of public policy are: 1. Environmental Policy 2. National Manufacturing Policy 3. Fiscal Policy 4. Monetary Policy 5. Competition Policy I like the Competition Policy formulated by government. The objectives of competition policy in India are the creation of an active competitive environment and to aid and abet the process of creating globally competitive firms with enhanced investment and technological capabilities. To achieve these objectives, the government will need to play

a proactive role. Rather than restricting themselves to issues conventionally covered by competition law, the authors consider, as part of competition policy, all those policy instruments that impinge on the promotion of competition in markets. Consequently, policies relating to trade, investment and technology development also come under the purview of competition policy insofar as they impinge on the process of competition. I would criticise the recent monetary policy adopted by RBI as it wants to curb inflation by increasing interest rates. This is adversely affecting the growth of Indian GDP which is witnessing slowest growth in past decade. Instead of keeping high interest rates , the RBI and Government should address the supply side problems in economy to curb inflation