The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at IIM Bangalore welcomed academicians, public policy creators and people from voluntary organisations to the XII International Conference on Public Policy and Management, inaugurated on August 5.
The three-day international event on ‘Inclusion and Exclusion: Policy and Practice’ brings together scholars, practitioners, experts, researchers and policy-makers from different disciplines to discuss diverse, policy-related issues.
The conference, now in its 12th year, provides an avenue for disseminating contemporary public policy research and emerging practices across a range of domains. This year’s event drew 200 paper submissions, which explored different ways in which policy processes impact social outcomes. They cover both theoretical and empirical points of view, and span research and practitioner pieces that cover academia, industry, and the government.
Wide range of themes
This year’s conference hosts a mix of academic sessions, workshops, panel discussions and practitioner-oriented discussions around key topics in public policy and management and ongoing research in the area. These include tracks on political economy, right to education, health, and specially organised sessions around argumentative policy analysis, conflict, security and policy, role of agricultural information delivery in sustainably increasing farm incomes in India, role of technology in enabling educational inclusion, and dynamics of change, ecosystems and governance in peri-urban areas.
The conference began on August 5 with a Public Policy Hackathon, which revolved around ways to develop apps focussed on exploiting fragmented data repositories to create a policy tool that can help improve programme and policy outreach, enrolment and outcomes. This was in partnership with MapUnity, a non-profit that was incubated at the entrepreneurship and innovation hub of IIM Bangalore, NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL).
On August 7, Anjan Mukherji, Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, delivered the keynote address on ‘The Role of Government or the Size of Government?’
Size and role of govt
Talking about the size of governments, of which the size of government spending and bureaucratic structures are indicators, he pointed out that what governments do is the more important question. “Governments could be large or small but they should work for the well-being and prosperity of the citizens,” he added.
Quoting eminent economists, social scientists and thinkers down the ages like Buchanan, Musgrave, Chanakya, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Mancur Olson, he said from ‘Arthashastra’ down to modern times, he stressed that the government’s key role is to remove obstructions to economic activity, enforce private contracts to foster competitive markets, maintain law and order, provide public goods of high quality, raise adequate taxes, support the legal system and ensure administration of (prompt) justice.
About the way forward, he said that governments need to engage with a set of functions based on the current economic paradigm. “There should be an SLP (stabilise, liberalise and privatise) regime, and the size of government activities should shrink. However, in ensuring these, certain things can go wrong — such as asymmetric information, market failure, and contractual obligation. If free trade is better than no trade, you need courts and other corrective steps to back you up. Contractual agreements should be protected by courts of law. The government has to ensure all this. Incentives of government officials to carry these out may be minimal, so scams and frauds occur. That is why people say governments should be kept small.”
Electoral practices, healthcare
Earlier in the day, Dr. Arnab Mukherji, Chairperson, Centre for Public Policy, introduced the theme of the conference and hoped it would provide a platform for useful conversations between academicians, public policy makers and NGOs.
A panel led by Dr. Ashutosh Varshney, from Brown University, on ‘Electoral Practices in India’, featured policy-makers, politicians and academics, including Prof Rajeev Gowda, MP, Rajya Sabha.
The plenary on August 8 explored the status and current practice of Decentralisation of Public Policy in India after the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution in the early 1990s.
The sessions on August 9 centre on how the fragmented healthcare system can be brought within a common framework to achieve integrated pathways for care at multiple levels and at various regions in a vast country like India, where informality drives the economy.
The closing address for the conference will be delivered by Prof G Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore, on ways forward in engaging with policy research, curating public policy debates and influencing public policy.