Guest Editorial

Vision
18(4) 257260
2014 MDI
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0972262914555815
http://vision.sagepub.com

Public Policy and Governance

in India
Avanish Kumar
Vishal Narain
Public policy in India is in a state of flux. The nature of the
policy process has changed dramatically with an increasing
role of different actors, both locally and globally. A case is
made to listen to the multiple voices that are emerging in
governance processes; it is argued that it is necessary to
create a space for dialogue among civil society and citizens
(Lahiri-Dutt, 2008). The demand for stronger links between
research and policy has grown, as much as efforts to mainstreaming public policy education to professionalize the
bureaucracy.
Several trends at the global level have shaped policymaking at the level of nation-states, often creating claims
of the erosion of state autonomy (Chang, 2006). New discourses have emerged that shape policy choices. Several
discourses have been nevertheless reduced to the status of
rhetoric and clich. Emerging demographic trends at the
national levelsuch as urbanizationand environmental
trends at the global levelsuch as climate changehave
redefined the contours of public policy and governance,
posing new challenges for policy formulation as well as
engendering debates on appropriate forms of governance.
Governance refers to all manners of exercising control
and authority in the allocation of resources (World Bank,
1994). Governance issues are thus closely tied to the processes and mechanisms through which people access
resources. These include issues of property rights, social
relationships and gender, as well as social capital through
which people access resources. Several approaches to governance reform have been experimented within the past;
however, the extent to which they have improved the
control of resource users remains a moot question. Often
this has been a question of efforts at changing control relations between the state and civil society; while policies
have succeeded in creating management capacity at lower
levels, it has been more difficult to alter power and control
relations.
The gap between governance and government is
understood to have widened in the Indian context, as well
as globally (Mathur, 2009). Actors other than the state have
come to acquire a greater role in the exercise of control and
authority in the allocation of resources. The locus of policymaking has moved from the state to other actors: markets
and civil society have created greater space for themselves
(Narain et al., 2014). State authority has been diluted by a

greater influence of other actors, both at local and global

levels. On the one hand, donors and funders have played
an increasing role in influencing the direction and nature
of reforms; on the other hand, several civil society organizations have made their presence felt in governance
processes. International NGOs and transnational corporations have served to challenge the state authority.
New discourses such as those of neo-liberalism and
good governance have altered the relationships between
state, markets and civil society. While the discourse of neoliberalism was founded on the narrative of the inefficient
state, the neo-liberal paradigm evoked criticisms on
account of the exclusion of the poor from the provision of
service delivery (Urs and Whittel, 2009). The discourse on
gender mainstreaming has gained more prominence, even
though gap between rhetoric and practice has persisted
(Ahmed, 2008; Joshi, 2014; Kulkarni, 2014). The discourse
on good governance has created a demand for greater
accountability and transparency, while creating more space
for civic engagement and civil society participation.
During the 1980s and 1990s, a disenchantment with the
role of the state as the main actor in governance processes
created grounds for policies for decentralization. This
process of involving users in public service delivery or in
the management of public infrastructure through deliberate
public policy intervention came to be carried out in several
sectors. However, a number of factors were found to limit
the effectiveness of the process, such as, the reproduction
of unequal power relations in the internal working of local
user groups, limited attention to questions of rights and
entitlements, as well as resistance within the bureaucracy.
The academic augmentation of public policy in India is
relatively new. In 1979, Myron Weiner, in an article titled
Social Science Research and Public Policy in India, analyzed the roles and natures of different institutions working
on policy issues, including IIMs. The article concludes,
Research in this field is in a preliminary phase. Studies
remain scattered and generally unrelated to one another,
lack a theoretical focus, and are not as yet cumulative. In
the last decade, with the support of the Government of
India, dedicated programmes in public policy and management have been introduced by institutes such as IIMs,
Management Development Institute and several central
universities. There are very few political scientists,

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Public Policy and Governance in India

sociologists or anthropologists focusing on public policies

in India. Most of the policy analyses and debates are
dominated by economists, and insights from other social
sciences are relatively new. As a result, some critical
aspects of policy studies are relatively well developed
(such as measuring policy effects), but others, much less.
The issues and questions, for instance, of why policies are
formulated and designed in particular ways in the first
place, and the political shaping of policies on the ground,
do not receive much attention (Mooij and Vos, 2003).
The realization of the need to bridge the gap between
practice and policy has finally begun taking shape in the
government. This is evident from the recent internship programme in higher education, announced by the Ministry of
Human Resource Development, which stresses on engaging Indian students in policy analysis. These initiatives
show a shift from policy-analysis processes towards participatory decision-making. In a way, they also create a
policy space for policy analysts other than positivists. The
need for social perspectives on the public policy is an
emergence of a new paradigm of governance and is a result
of different forms of engagement with civil society, media,
private sector and judicial activism.
Designing and implementing long-term sustainable
change requires demonstration of the truth, which, sometimes, becomes a political risk for policy makers. Thus,
impurity and its effects bring with them the need to investigate the past. Truth in policy-making is still caught up in
the form of a struggle. Judgement no longer solely depends
on the fulfilment of a procedure, but on the reality of a fact
(Defert, 2011). Lack of consolidated insights and academic
resources of the right set of actors on these policy issues
have often treated symptoms rather than causes. This signifies that the reality of the fact must be established for one
to escape the effects of the impurity.
In this backdrop, this issue of VisionThe Journal of
Business Perspectivesexamines the changing contours
of public policy formulation and implementation in India.
The aricles chosen in this issue cover a wide range of areas
of public policy formation, while focusing on the specific
trends and processes at the global and national levels that
have shaped the evolution of public policy and engendered
debates on new and appropriate forms of governance.
The following articles attempt to construct facts through
the scientific enquiry of the existing literature and analyzing multiple discourses. The articles capture multidimensional public policy issues in India, with particular
reference to fiscal decentralization of municipal corporation, governmentality of bureaucratic attitude, analysis
of transitory urban spaces, adoptive governance in the
context of climate change, disaster and development,
education, food, livelihoods, gender, cities and the community radio as a development tool. These articles seek to

identify ingredients associated with successful public

policy, public action and programme implementation for
problem-solvingbe it issues of policy paralysis due to
ineffective bureaucracy, lack of strategic engagement with
think tanks or gender, education, food-and-nutrition insecurity, unsustainable rural livelihoods, mushrooming of
unplanned cities and irreversible climate change.
Though India is divided by caste, religion and region,
these divisions have persisted largely due to lack of structural and organized linkages between policy makers and
academia. Consequently, the premise of policy-making has
remained embedded in bureaucratic power structures.
Thus, despite the right intention, policy decisions have
remained inadequate due to incomplete knowledge of
reality.
Out of the 12 articles, two articles (by Monica Singhania
and Mayank Sharma) are structured around empirical
understanding of the Municipal Corporation of New Delhi.
The article by Poulomi Banerjee et al. focuses on measuring and mapping the transitory space in Hyderabad. Monica
Singhania and Mayank Sharma, in Trifurcation of MCD:
First Budget as Essential Tool of Governance, analyze the
management tools of installation and innovative development of the budgetary system in the trifurcated Municipal
Corporation of New Delhi as a prerequisite to good governance. From the peoples perspective, the budget plays a
significant role in urban local bodies when it comes to
meeting socio-political obligations. Poulomi Banerjee et
al., in Measuring and Mapping Transitory Spaces in India:
A Case Study of Hyderabad City, measure and map periurban areas with an assumption that they are a combination
of both space and processes. The authors argue that it is a
reflection of a complex mix of both spatial and a-spatial
phenomena that may be observed at the level of the household, village, sub-district or district. Understanding periurban as a place helps identify features and processes that
effectively correspond with ways that stand midway
between completely rural and purely urban. However, as
an a-spatial phenomenon, it corresponds to processes
wherein its location is not restricted to the fringe areas but
can occur anywhere. The article constructs an analytic
framework for identifying and measuring peri-urban areas
based on their various dimensions.
The article by Rahul Singh et al. focuses on the role and
relevance of voluntary think tanks on policy-making, while
Sangeeta Goels article focuses on bureaucratic attitude.
Both articles focus on government ability to engage and
the public mentality to be distant regarding the participatory process of policy-making, ultimately affecting its
performance. Rahul Singh et al., in Think Tanks, Research
Influence and Public Policy in India, suggest that structured institutional think tanks in India are a relatively new
phenomena in comparison to the West. In this backdrop,

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Avanish Kumar and Vishal Narain 259

the article analyzes issues of definition and ideology, credibility in research, governance, funding and interaction on
policy. Bureaucratic AttitudesAn Intermediary Variable
of Policy Performance by Sangeeta Goel focuses on the
psychological baggage or attitudes of human agency that
might interfere with policy process at the implementation
level, distorting the entire policy outcome. The article is
based on ethnographic case-based analyses located in an
Indian public organization.
The article by Meerambika Mahapatro traces the genealogy of gender discourse, while Jain and Bhardwaj focus
on understanding diversity as a source or solution of
exclusion. The article Mainstreaming Gender: Shift from
Advocacy to Policy by Mahapatro argues that placing
gender values firmly at all levels and in all sectors requires
a change in the philosophy of conceptualization of gender
within the culturally defined roles, constraints and potentialities. The article concludes that gender mainstreaming is
underdeveloped as a concept and identifies a need to elaborate further on the areas of womens needs, rights and the
relationship between gender mainstreaming, policy and
societal change. Understanding Diversity Issues vis--vis
Caste-based Quota System: A Solution or a Source of
Discrimination by Suparna Jain and Gopa Bhardwaj, an
organization-based understanding of 300 employees in the
public sector, reveals the perception on diversity created in
such organizations as a result of an affirmative caste-based
reservation policy. The article provides insights into
improving the stratified situation that arises due to affirmative action in terms of managing diversity created by the
quota system.
Navarun Varma et al. focus on one of the most encompassing and topical issues of policy debateclimate
change, disaster and development for adoptive governance; while Sumit Vijs article captures the untamed urbanization, common property resources and gender relations.
On the one hand, growing international attention to climate
change has led to debates around new forms of (adaptive)
governance; on the other hand, it has led to thinking on
innovative ways of building community resilience and
adaptive capacity. In particular, the concepts of vulnerability, capacity and resilience have been particularly
strong and structuring within the disaster-risk-reduction
literature where both the concepts of vulnerability and
capacity emerged in the 1970s and 1980s (Gaillard, 2010).
Since then, they have sustained discourses on sustainable
development and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Addressing governance challenges in the face of
climate change, the article by Navarun Varma et al. highlights the need for adaptive governance in the context of
urban and rural flooding; the authors show how different
narratives describing a problem create a situation wherein
stakeholder perceptions of the situation fail to converge.

The article by Sumit Vij explores the equity dimensions of

the process, examining how urbanization processes shape
the access of the poor and landless to common property
resources on which they depend for their sustenance. Sumit
Vij shows how urbanization dynamics interface with local
power relations to further restrict the access of the poor to
common property resources.
Democratizing Information in India: Role of Community Radios as a Developmental Intervention by
Madhukar Shukla emphasizes the value of reinstating
locally suited policy instruments for appropriate sustainable development. At the time when information access and
utilization are critical agents of transformation, Shuklas
article analyzes social and spatial characteristics of the
communities that are dispersed, and as their issues and
needs are both unique and varied, community radios
hold an enormous potential for promoting sustainable
development by strengthening the grass-roots communities. It highlights the role of Community Radio Stations in
promoting development by democratizing access to information. Patnaik and Prasad in Revisiting Sustainable
Livelihoods: Insights from Implementation Studies in
India, through state-of-the-art literature review establish
the need for bridging the development and academia divide
to make the sustainable livelihood frame work on ground.
Joshi, Bindlish and Verma focus on the contemporary
education that still survives in the shadow of colonial
hegemony. In the article A Post-colonial Perspective
Towards Education in Bharat, they analyze the roots of
educational outcome in the contemporary society in the
colonial residue post independence. National Food
Security Act, 2013 and Food Security Outcomes in India
by Amrita Sandhu is a comprehensive analysis of the
National Food Security Act and provides insights for taking
policy actions to reach the people. The article attempts to
understand the effect of the National Food Security Act on
food-security outcomes in India in the context of rightto-food discourse and factors behind the perpetual failure
in foodsecurity outcomes by applying the foodsecurity
measurement framework. The article summaries the needs
for policies to look beyond subsidized food-grain assistance to ensure nutritional security.
In essence, the policy environment in India has been
shaped by a curious intersection of globalization and localization, growing demands and movements for transparency
and accountability and a growing intellectual interest in the
study of policy implementation process, the professionalization of the bureaucracy and an institutionalization of the
researchpolicy interface. Ultimately, a problem does not
have a meaning of its own; it is the way policy makers
interpret the problem to create solutions. With this critical
social perspective of policy processes and policy design,
this special issue indents to fill the academic vacuum of
policy analysis. Our academic endeavour to make policies
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Public Policy and Governance in India

that are inclusive and sustainable was the impetus for this
special issue on public policy and governance. We hope
this special issue is able to network interaction within academic discourse weaving across domains and disciplines.
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