Imp

http://www.insightsonindia.com/2016/10/06/public-administration-synopsis-2016-mains-writing-challenges/

elenor ostrom

The challenge presented by the Muzaffarnagar riots, therefore, is to somehow democratise police administration that makes it accountable to the people. One way of adding a direct line of accountability to people, in order to generally control and monitor provision of goods and services, is to establish what political scientist Vincent Ostrom calls, “democratic administration.” In democratic administration, the power to oversee provision of goods and services is devolved on multiple “communities of interest.”community policing also needs to be put in here.IT SEEMED to Elinor Ostrom that the world contained a large body of common sense. People, left to themselves, would sort out rational ways of surviving and getting along. Although the world's arable land, forests, fresh water and fisheries were all finite, it was possible to share them without depleting them and to care for them without fighting. While others wrote gloomily of the tragedy of the commons, seeing only overfishing and overfarming in a free-for-all of greed, Mrs Ostrom, with her loud laugh and louder tops, cut a cheery and contrarian figure.
Years of fieldwork, by herself and others, had shown her that humans were not trapped and helpless amid diminishing supplies. She had looked at forests in Nepal, irrigation systems in Spain, mountain villages in Switzerland and Japan, fisheries in Maine and Indonesia. She had even, as part of her PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the water wars and pumping races going on in the 1950s in her own dry backyard.
All these cases had taught her that, over time, human beings tended to draw up sensible rules for the use of common-pool resources. Neighbours set boundaries and assigned shares, with each individual taking it in turn to use water, or to graze cows on a certain meadow. Common tasks, such as clearing canals or cutting timber, were done together at a certain time. Monitors watched out for rule-breakers, fining or eventually excluding them. The schemes were mutual and reciprocal, and many had worked well for centuries.
Best of all, they were not imposed from above. Mrs Ostrom put no faith in governments, nor in large conservation schemes paid for with aid money and crawling with concrete-bearing engineers. “Polycentrism” was her ideal. Caring for the commons had to be a multiple task, organised from the ground up and shaped to cultural norms. It had to be discussed face to face, and based on trust. Mrs Ostrom, besides poring over satellite data and quizzing lobstermen herself, enjoyed employing game theory to try to predict the behaviour of people faced with limited resources. In her Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University—set up with her husband Vincent, a political scientist, in 1973—her students were given shares in a notional commons. When they simply discussed what they should do before they did it, their rate of return from their “investments” more than doubled.
“Small is beautiful” sometimes seemed to be her creed. Her workshop looked somewhat like a large, cluttered cottage, reflecting her and Vincent's idea that science was a form of artisanship. When the vogue in America was all for consolidation of public services, she ran against it. For some years she compared police forces in the town of Speedway and the city of Indianapolis, finding that forces of 25-50 officers performed better by almost every measure than 100-strong metropolitan teams. But smaller institutions, she cautioned, might not work better in every case. As she travelled the world, giving out good and sharp advice, “No panaceas!” was her cry.
Scarves for the troopsRather than littleness, collaboration was her watchword. Neighbours thrived if they worked together. The best-laid communal schemes would fall apart once people began to act only as individuals, or formed elites. Born poor herself, to a jobless film-set-maker in Los Angeles who soon left her mother alone, she despaired of people who wanted only a grand house or a fancy car. Her childhood world was coloured by digging a wartime “victory” vegetable garden, knitting scarves for the troops, buying her clothes in a charity store: mutual efforts to a mutual end.
The same approach was valuable in academia, too. Her own field, institutional economics (or “the study of social dilemmas”, as she thought of it), straddled political science, ecology, psychology and anthropology. She liked to learn from all of them, marching boldly across the demarcation lines to hammer out good policy, and she welcomed workshop-partners from any discipline, singing folk songs with them, too, if anyone had a guitar. They were family. Pure economists looked askance at this perky, untidy figure, especially when she became the first woman to win a shared Nobel prize for economics in 2009. She was not put out; it was the workshop's prize, anyway, she said, and the money would go for scholarships.
Yet the incident shed a keen light on one particular sort of collaboration: that between men and women. Lin (as everyone called her) and Vincent, both much-honoured professors, were joint stars of their university in old age. But she had been dissuaded from studying economics at UCLA because, being a girl, she had been steered away from maths at high school; and she was dissuaded from doing political science because, being a girl, she could not hope for a good university post. As a graduate, she had been offered only secretarial jobs; and her first post at Indiana involved teaching a 7.30am class in government that no one else would take.
There was, she believed, a great common fund of sense and wisdom in the world. But it had been an uphill struggle to show that it reposed in both women and men; and that humanity would do best if it could exploit it to the full

code of conduct roopa moudgil dig

Roopa Moudgil, the deputy inspector general (prisons) of Karnataka, made it to the national news last week for exposing the special treatment given to AIADMK interim general secretary V K Sasikala, who is lodged in Bengaluru's Parappana Agrahara central prison. The plot thickened on Monday when Moudgil was transferred from her position by the Siddaramaiah government pending an inquiry. Predictably, many television news hosts ran down the Karnataka government on Monday night for shielding the corrupt and punishing the whistleblowers.

There is no doubt that DIG Moudgil honoured her commitment to the public by throwing light on corruption in the jail system. She confirmed what has been widely known for a long time, in fact— the rich and powerful are as a matter of course given VIP treatment even behind bars, such as in the case of mafia don-turned politician Mohammad Shahabuddin, or even Sahara chief Subrata Roy.

The Karnataka government has rightly issued show cause notices to both Rao and Moudgil for violating the code of conduct...[their transfers were also] necessary to ensure a fair enquiry.

She should not have accused the DG of accepting a hefty bribe without substantiation. Secondly, she should not have shared the letter with the media.

It is right for Moudgil to expose the scam, especially as she had the advantage of being an insider. But the way she went about doing it gave rise to a lot of concerns. First, she should not have accused the DG of accepting a hefty bribe without substantiation. Secondly, she should not have shared the letter with the media. DIG Moudgil has, of course, charged that her letter was leaked by Rao, not by herself. But that seems unlikely, since why would Rao choose to put himself under the scanner this way?

DIG Moudgil ought to know that she would have gone down in history as a laudable whistleblower had she demonstrated greater professional conduc

Bureaushaping

WunWun:
Bureau-shaping is a rational choice model of bureaucracy and a response to the budget-maximization model. It argues that rational officials will not want to maximize their budgets, but instead to shape their agency so as to maximize their personal utilities from their work. For instance, bureaucrats would prefer to work in small, elite agencies close to political power centres and doing interesting work, rather than to run large-budget agencies with many staff but also many risks and problems. For the same reasons, and to avoid risks, the bureau-shaping model also predicts that senior government bureaucrats will often favour either 'agencification' to other public sector bodies (as in the UK 'Next Steps' programme) or off-loading functions to contractors and privatization. In the health and social work fields, officials will favour 'deinstitutionalization' and 'care in the community'. The model was developed by Patrick Dunleavy from the London School of Economics in Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice (London: Pearson Education, 1991, reissued 2001).

It was propounded in response to William Niskanen's harsh criticism of Public Bureaucracies in his Budget Maximising Model. The Niskanen model predicts that in representative democracies, public bureaucracies will not only generate allocative inefficiency (by oversupplying public goods) but also x-inefficiency (by producing public goods inefficiently). It is evident that the Niskanen model is heavily reliant on an American institutional milieu. Patrick Dunleavy, a British political scientist who set out to demolish the public choice arguments on bureaucracy, came instead in the end to develop a public choice model of bureaucratic behaviour which combines elements of Peacock’s insight with the original American model. The Dunleavy (1985, p.300) model of public bureaucracy is built on six basic assumptions. The first three are consistent with Niskanen’s model:

(a) bureau policies are set by bureaucrats interacting with the government;

(b) governments largely depend on information from bureaus about the costs and value of producing within given ranges of output; and

(c) bureaucrats maximise their personal utilities (by satisfying "self-regarding, relatively hard-edged preferences") when making official decisions.

Added to these are two 4 assumptions which greatly weaken the budget-maximising conclusion. These are that a bureau’s aggregate policy behaviour is set by some combination of individual decisions made by its officials, although the actual combination that results may be an outcome desired by no bureau member; and that, within broad limits, officials’ influence on bureau policy is always correlated with rank and those nearest the top of bureaus are the most influential. Dunleavy therefore discards Niskanen’s assumption that a bureau’s behaviour will be wholly in line with the preferences of a single senior bureaucrat. In a bureau, where no individual has complete hegemony, budget maximisation is a collective, not an individual good. Rational utility maximising individuals will thus tend to favour strategies that directly advance their personal interests ahead of strategies that advance the collective good. The interaction of the maximising activities of individuals within a bureau will not necessarily lead to budget maximizing.

Gst and local tax

When did we see states misusing a provision in GST?

A major tax reform such as the goods and services tax (GST) is bound to have teething problems. This was fully anticipated and taxmen at the state and central levels are geared up to fix them.

What was not anticipated is the introduction of new taxes and levies and new inspections that would thwart the gains of subsuming most indirect taxes other than customs duty into GST, except in the case of those goods and services that have been kept outside the ambit of the tax for the time being.

This must not be allowed and not only must Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu that have initiated new levies in the wake of GST reverse their fiscal impetuousness but the GST Council must resolve against such self-defeatist moves.

The Constitution vests in state governments the authority to decide what taxes and levies local bodies such as municipalities and panchayats would levy, via Article 243H for Panchayats and Article 243X for municipalities.

These articles also authorise states to transfer taxes, collection and grants to local bodies. Articles 243I and 243Y ask the states to set up five-yearly finance commissions to determine how much of their revenues would be devolved to and amongst local bodies.

These provisions fix accountability on state governments to prevent tax adventurism on the part of local bodies while making sure they get adequate resources.

The existing GST rates have been fixed to achieve revenue neutrality. It means that collections under GST would be at least equal to what the states used to collect pre-GST, and the Centre will make good any deficit.

This being the case, states have no justification whatsoever in introducing new levies, such as Maharashtra’s increased vehicle tax or Tamil Nadu’s entertainment tax, to compensate for levies given up, such as octroi.

Now that tax inspectors no longer have to stop vehicles on the road, other babus have taken it upon themselves to stop cargo vehicles on the road for random checks. Such harassment must end, to prevent a revolt against GST. The point is to make GST exhaustive and efficient, not to undermine it.

Niti aayogh

Some other recommedations from NITI Ayog on civil services reforms as mentioned in 3 year action agenda:

- Early promotion to secretary post so that the officer has ample time to take any major initiative and see the changes
- NITI has emphasized on domain specialization of Civil servants hence the current practice of frequent rotational duty amongst different ministries should be replaced with longer postings at one particular ministries in order to   develop domain specialization.
-Additionally we should bring expert talents in civil services through lateral entry
-NITI has made proposal that the Pilot should start from NITI itself and it should be allowed to hire contract based external experts.

Interlinkages

Recent controversy where a bsf jawan posting pics of inadequate quality of food on social media can be potrayed as an example of contribution satisfaction inequilibrium
Zone of indifference -police officials of same caste community ignoring to act on orders .example jat agitation violence
Sorry this is zone of denial

Gave some examples from India like
Integration has happened through 2Ps --
-PARTICIPATION (social audits, hackathon)
-PENETRATION (73rd amendment)
Hence inspite of hvng lesser differentiation we are integrating well nd chalking our way out towards development.
Frm riggs

[12/07 4:57 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Participation-citizen report cards,community policing ,pani panchayat,mohalla sabhas,resident welfare associations,twitter samvad,mygov askinng for feedbackand suggestions
[12/07 4:59 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Penetration-mohalla sabha,dpc,asha workers for health,banking correspondents for finalcial penetration
Lack of integration
In area of Regulation Multiplicity of Finacial regulators And even education sector
  And recommendaation of fslrc for unifed regulator Yashpal comiite For education
 Called for Unified regulatir Fused aspects In tribal areas of india
 Diffracted aspects can be seen in big metros like dekhi Delhi

  Example of civil society participating in policy agenda Linking likert to indian admin

Until police reforms are successfully implemented and a behavioural and structural change is brought in our police system -it will continue to be a system 2 or system 3(likert).so police reforms can ensure police to be a system 4(democratic participative system).
  Linkage of public policy and development admin with systems of likert
System 1 and 2 -as they are not consulatative so -aeroplane model of development
System 4 - more ecological  appriach needed so helicopter approach.
 In chapter of psu-we can link likert systems for explaining low productivity and low profits -because causal variables ,intervening variables and end results are different for system 1and system 4 and mostly our psu are system 1 except few like isro etc
 Ilp: Except ur old air india disinvestment
 Also in todays indian express i came across this ..that the new bjp gvt in up is removing the separate pathways meant fr cyclist next to roads
  The cycling pathways were created by s.p gvt which has cycle as its symbol
 Can we say that states despite losing their fiscal autonomy chose to implement GST because they followed order from the law of situation...rather than being forced by the centre..situation being the need to reduce logistics cost promote ease of doing business etc..
I used nirbhaya social movement (politics )converting into change in criminal ammendment law and improved sensitivity among state organs (pub ad)

Public policy lindblom incrementalism instead of rationalism with 4 rates, exclusions etc more a political compromise - garbage can model. Also impact on funds for lsg, since will depend on state for funds. Co-operative federalism with states and unanimity in legislature while passing the bill.

Interlinkages

Recent controversy where a bsf jawan posting pics of inadequate quality of food on social media can be potrayed as an example of contribution satisfaction inequilibrium
Zone of indifference -police officials of same caste community ignoring to act on orders .example jat agitation violence
Sorry this is zone of denial

Gave some examples from India like 
Integration has happened through 2Ps --
-PARTICIPATION (social audits, hackathon)
-PENETRATION (73rd amendment) 
Hence inspite of hvng lesser differentiation we are integrating well nd chalking our way out towards development. 
Frm riggs

[12/07 4:57 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Participation-citizen report cards,community policing ,pani panchayat,mohalla sabhas,resident welfare associations,twitter samvad,mygov askinng for feedbackand suggestions
[12/07 4:59 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Penetration-mohalla sabha,dpc,asha workers for health,banking correspondents for finalcial penetration
[12/07 4:59 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Lack of integration
[12/07 4:59 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: In area of
[12/07 4:59 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Regulation
[12/07 5:00 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Multiplicity of
[12/07 5:00 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Finacial regulators
[12/07 5:00 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: And even education sector
[12/07 5:00 pm] Ilp: And recommendaation of fslrc for unifed regulator
[12/07 5:01 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Yashpal comiite
[12/07 5:01 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: For education
[12/07 5:01 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Called for
[12/07 5:01 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Unified regulatir
[12/07 5:01 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Fused aspects
[12/07 5:01 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: In tribal areas of india
[12/07 5:02 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Diffracted aspects can be seen in big metros like dekhi
[12/07 5:02 pm] Gautam Pub Adm: Delhi

Economy and public admn

Right to recall ..folletts direct democracy

BHOPAL, APRIL 11. For the first time in the history of Indian democracy, the Madhya Pradesh voters exercised their right to recall and dethroned the president of Anuppur Nagar Panchayat in Shahadol district, Mrs. Pallavika Patel.

Reacting to the event, the Chief Minister, Mr. Digvijay Singh, said the Anuppur example would give a new direction to the country. Accountability was a must in a democracy and the right to recall would strengthen direct democracy in the State.

The State had given the right to recall in cases of directly elected mayors, presidents and sarpanchas in urban civic bodies and panchayats. Mr. Singh was also the first Chief Minister to decentralise powers at the grassroots level by holding panchayat elections as per the 73rd Constitutional amendment.

The counting of votes polled on Monday under the Right to Recall for Annuppur Nagar Panchayat was done yesterday. A total of 5519 votes were cast of which 3255 were in favour of the Empty Chair and only 1678 votes in favour of the Occupied Chair. Under the rules, if more than 50 per cent votes are cast in favour of the unoccupied chair, the present incumbent gets dethroned.

In Madhya Pradesh, the relevant laws have been amended for moving a no-confidence motion against mayors or presidents of urban civic bodies. Under the new dispensation, a resolution endorsed by three-fourths of the total number of elected corporators or councillors could be submitted to the Collector or Commissioner for the recall of the mayor or president. After verification, the resolution is forwarded to the State Government, which then refers the matter to the State Election Commission for holding polls for the recall of the mayor or president.

MPs and MLAs should be recalled within two years from being elected if 75% of those who voted for them are not satisfied with their performance, according to a bill moved by BJP MP Varun Gandhi.

“Logic and justice necessitate that if the people have the power to elect their representatives, they should also have the power to remove these representatives when they engage in misdeeds or fail to fulfil the duties,” Varun said.

Stating that the countries all over the world have experimented with the concept of Right to Recall, the Lok Sabha MP has proposed an amendment in the Representation of the People Act 1951 through his Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2016. As per the legislation, recalling process can be initiated by any voter of the constituency by filing a petition before the Speaker, signed by at least one-fourth of the total number of electors in that constituency.

After confirming its authenticity, the Speaker will move the application to the Election Commission for its verification and authentication of the voters’ signatures on it. The Commission will verify the signatures on it and will organise the voting on 10 places in the respective constituency of MP or MLA, it says.

If three-fourth of the votes that member was polled in his election, go in favour of the recall process, the member will be recalled, the bill proposes. Within 24 hours of the receipt of the result, the Speaker will notify the result to the general public. Once the seat gets duly vacated the Commission can organise a by-poll in that constituency.

“A free and fair election is the right of the citizens of the country and in the event of their elected representatives no longer enjoying their confidence, the people must have a right to remove them,” Varun said. It is on the edifice of accountability of politicians that the true idea of democracy can be achieved, he added. At present there is no recourse to the electorate if they are unhappy with their elected representative.

The Representation of the People Act, 1951 only provides for vacation of office upon the commission of certain offences and does not account for general incompetence or dissatisfaction of the electorate as a ground for vacation.

Rey npm

The first criticism of NPM involves a paradox of centralisation through decentralisation. To illustrate the point, Kaboolian (1998), and Maor (1999) pointed out that giving public managers more authority to manage programs may result in concentrating decisions making in them. 

Thus, NPM may lead to centralised decision making by public managers, rather than encouraging decentralization in public organizations as it claims.

The second criticism concerns applying private sector management techniques to the public sector. While NPM has encouraged the use of private sector management techniques, there may be risk associated with adopting some private sector practices. Many academic commentators such as Pollitt (1990) and Armstrong (1998) argued that most areas of public service and administration have distinct political, ethical, constitutional and social dimensions and these factors make the public sector different from the private sector.

A complementary view is provided by Savoie (2002) and Singh (2003), who argues that NPM is basically flawed because private sector management practices are rarely adopted into government operations. For them, NPM is inappropriate for the public sector as it has more complex objectives, more intricate accountabilities and a more turbulent political environment than the private sector. 

Moreover, the relationship between public sector managers and political leaders is of a different order to any relationships in the private sector. In support of the above mentioned argument, Painter (1997) contended that there is danger in using private business models in the public sector because of the contextual differences.

Fourthly, Hughes (2003) argued that it is difficult for the government in developing countries to move to contractual arrangements for the delivery of service because the necessary laws and the enforcement of contract are not well established. If informal norms have long deviated significantly from formal ones (with regard to personnel practices, for example), simply introducing new formal rules will not change much. Where specialized skills are in short supply, performance contracts and other output based contracts for complex services may absorb a large share of scarce bureaucratic capacity to specify and enforce them (World Bank, 1997). It seems difficult for developing countries to move away from the bureaucratic system. Hughes (2003) pointed out that this old model of organization allows favoritism and patronage.

. 

this also proved riggs ecological model .

In hong kong contractual appointments were done in sync with the business cycle of economy..this led to loss of moral of the employees leading to reduced productivity

Policy india

The think tanks and their attempts to formulate policy raise the whole question of the relation between knowledge and the public sphere. Policy formulation has not really articulated the views of the public sphere. In fact, the first challenges to policy came from the social movements, and from civil society which identified policy and experts as mere extensions to the state. The movements that grew around the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Narmada dam; the narratives of displacement and dispossession raised deep questions about policy and expertise, and about the public consumption of policy. Governance is now seen no longer as a statist exercise and the question of governmentality involves civil society articulating new epistemologies, notions of citizenship, ideas about the democratisation of knowledge and the assessment of public policy impacts. Governance has become tied to democracy, with the public sphere becoming crucial and public policy a critical field.

Field of the future 

Public policy is not its impoverished, mechanistic cousin, Public Administration. Jawaharlal Nehru started the Indian Institute of Public Administration on the basis of the Paul Appleby report. Public policy became that empty space between management and public administration. It had a different texture and different requirements. Management schools in India have never succeeded in establishing a successful school of public policy as all efforts have become annexes of departments of economics.

Kothari and U.R. Ananthamurthy belong to the category of public intellectuals. The policy intellectual usually takes his expertise for granted. The public intellectual questions the nature of expertise, probing deeper into the ethics and genealogy of ideas. In the post-liberalisation period, India has had more policy than public intellectuals with think tanks like the Centre for Policy Research and the Observer Research Foundation dominating the scene.

The think tanks and their attempts to formulate policy raise the whole question of the relation between knowledge and the public sphere. Policy formulation has not really articulated the views of the public sphere. In fact, the first challenges to policy came from the social movements, and from civil society which identified policy and experts as mere extensions to the state. The movements that grew around the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Narmada dam; the narratives of displacement and dispossession raised deep questions about policy and expertise, and about the public consumption of policy. Governance is now seen no longer as a statist exercise and the question of governmentality involves civil society articulating new epistemologies, notions of citizenship, ideas about the democratisation of knowledge and the assessment of public policy impacts. Governance has become tied to democracy, with the public sphere becoming crucial and public policy a critical field.

Field of the future 

Public policy is not its impoverished, mechanistic cousin, Public Administration. Jawaharlal Nehru started the Indian Institute of Public Administration on the basis of the Paul Appleby report. Public policy became that empty space between management and public administration. It had a different texture and different requirements. Management schools in India have never succeeded in establishing a successful school of public policy as all efforts have become annexes of departments of economics.

Public administration is more a monument to the bureaucratic ego in India than to administrative reflexivity. As experiments, public policy has never succeeded, and yet today is a fast growing field with new departments at various institutions and universities. So far, it is a case of necessity not generating adequate inventiveness in our institutions. Yet, public policy is one of the fields of the future, linking as it does, new notions of empowerment in democracy with new ideas of knowledge in policy.

What makes public policy exciting, protean and potentially inventive is the contested nature of the public sphere. It is anchored in a diversity of perspectives which challenges the dominance of one subject. For example, economics, which was almost a canonical discipline, now realises that it confronts a new commons of social sciences which sees its sense of measure as inadequate to understand freedom or suffering. The new developments in feminism, cultural studies, future studies and science studies have added an increasing plurality to the fields of knowledge. Today, the relation between the ‘expert’ and the ‘citizen’ has changed and new forms of knowledge have to be considered. One sees this particularly in the development of ecological policy.

Nature which was once taken for granted or seen as passive in the realm of knowledge is now becoming a part of the social contract. The problems of climate change, and the energy crisis have revealed that science and economics are inadequate to answer questions related to ecology. Revolutions in ecology show that panarchy, complexity and risk had created a non-Promethean science where policy is merely prudent and precautionary. The subject of ethics has made a big return into the making of these disciplines. A subject-wise understanding in terms of the old hierarchies of knowledge is inadequate for policy. We are looking for new modes of knowledge which are intercultural, interdisciplinary and holistic. The emphasis is now on emergence rather than certainty.

New demands of democracy

These revolutions in knowledge have been catalysed by the new demands of democracy. Democracy is no more a passive exercise of citizenship reduced only to the exercise of periodic elections. Today, democracy is more proactive. The citizen knows more and demands more. She is ready to challenge the dominance of the expert. She senses that her active role is required to sustain a society. The public sphere today is more dynamic and contested.

One senses the excitement and the choices before India in the issues confronting us. In the 1950s, India treated nuclear energy as sacrosanct. Today, the fishermen of Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, and the tribals and villagers in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat are challenging the location of nuclear plants and even the feasibility of nuclear energy.

One sees similar debate on the future of biotechnology, for example on the need for Genetically Modified (GM) crops. For the first time, one saw an Environment Minister invite all stakeholders to a debate when in 2010, Mr. Jairam Ramesh of the Congress called for public consultations on the release of Bt brinjal. It was wonderful to watch the public sphere debating public policy on biotechnology.

The recent debates around growth, development and the fate of forests and the future of mining have also raised issues that public policy must answer. The new generation has to ask itself whether nature has rights: for example does a mountain have legal standing? When a tribal says that when a mountain dies, a myth dies, how does one translate his language into the dialects of policy? Recently, there was a report on the death of a waterfall. How does one analyse the death of a ‘myth’ through costs and benefits? Is a waterfall only about cusecs of water?

Similarly, the city raises its own seedbed of questions around the informal economy, the future of waste, issues of violence — all of which confront the policymaker. Ethics, science, suffering and philosophy cannot be ignored in any debate today. A student has to reach into the best of the academe to answer the new challenges to citizenship. One has to dream of futures in realistic terms going beyond the simplicity of smart cities to ask what urban space and urban imagination are.

Aap bs bureaucrats