'How to Bring the "Public" Back into India’s Public Policies' a talk by Prof. Sudarshan Ramaswamy at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 21st January 2014
Time : 3:00 pm
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Seminar on ‘How to Bring the ‘’Public’’ Back into India’s Public Policies’ by Prof. Sudarshan Ramaswamy, O.P Jindal Global University, Sonipat.
Abstract : The institution most vital for public policy to become a practice, so that it does not remain a collective noun for technological fixes unrelated to the common good is democracy. There are several living 'traditions' of consultation and consensus making all over the world. Such local practices need to be 'critically transformed' in order to make them relevant for democratic practices today. The Aam Aadmi Party illustrates a serious attempt in the life of India’s democracy to make public participation in policy making more meaningful. Public policy practitioners must find more ways and means of reaching out to the general public. The need to create channels by which ordinary people can influence policy making has acquired a greater urgency because representative democracy is failing to live up to expectations. People’s representatives seem to be representing themselves and their interests, and not those of the people who elected them. The best way to pursue long-term democratic reform is to provide a context where the deliberative democracy of the people flourishes and can give voice to key concerns. Policy choices have to be made consonant with the informed preferences of people at large. That is the highest form of democracy. The public should be consulted about issues of collective political will, about the trade-offs they are willing to accept for the basic direction of policy. They should be consulted about the question of whether we should build nuclear power plants. They need not be consulted about the choice of nuclear reactors. For that you need experts and the technocrats. Public policy, if it evolves into a practice, with a teleological commitment to the common good, then drawing the general public into dialogue and discussions is imperative. The purpose here need not be to hammer out a consensus. The purpose is simply deliberation and public understanding of policy issues. But achieving this is by no means easy. Enormous challenges posed by vested interests must be surmounted. Public apathy must be overcome and a myriad other challenges related to how to involve the public in policy-making.
Speaker : Professor R. Sudarshan is the founding Dean of the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy at the O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, Haryana, since August 2012. He is a lapsed economist having once obtained an M.A. in economics from D-School. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, got an M.Phil. in Politics. He was a junior research fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge, U.K., where he did research on the interface of law and economics and explored how judges grasp, or fail to grasp, issues related to legislation on economic policies. He has nearly thirty years’ experience as a development practitioner, having worked as a programme officer in the Ford Foundation’s South Asia Office, and as a policy advisor in the United Nations Development Programme, in India, Indonesia, the Oslo Governance Centre, and the UNDP regional centre serving all Asian countries, located in Bangkok.
Related Events : Talks
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Seminar on ‘How to Bring the ‘’Public’’ Back into India’s Public Policies’ by Prof. Sudarshan Ramaswamy, O.P Jindal Global University, Sonipat.
Abstract : The institution most vital for public policy to become a practice, so that it does not remain a collective noun for technological fixes unrelated to the common good is democracy. There are several living 'traditions' of consultation and consensus making all over the world. Such local practices need to be 'critically transformed' in order to make them relevant for democratic practices today. The Aam Aadmi Party illustrates a serious attempt in the life of India’s democracy to make public participation in policy making more meaningful. Public policy practitioners must find more ways and means of reaching out to the general public. The need to create channels by which ordinary people can influence policy making has acquired a greater urgency because representative democracy is failing to live up to expectations. People’s representatives seem to be representing themselves and their interests, and not those of the people who elected them. The best way to pursue long-term democratic reform is to provide a context where the deliberative democracy of the people flourishes and can give voice to key concerns. Policy choices have to be made consonant with the informed preferences of people at large. That is the highest form of democracy. The public should be consulted about issues of collective political will, about the trade-offs they are willing to accept for the basic direction of policy. They should be consulted about the question of whether we should build nuclear power plants. They need not be consulted about the choice of nuclear reactors. For that you need experts and the technocrats. Public policy, if it evolves into a practice, with a teleological commitment to the common good, then drawing the general public into dialogue and discussions is imperative. The purpose here need not be to hammer out a consensus. The purpose is simply deliberation and public understanding of policy issues. But achieving this is by no means easy. Enormous challenges posed by vested interests must be surmounted. Public apathy must be overcome and a myriad other challenges related to how to involve the public in policy-making.
Speaker : Professor R. Sudarshan is the founding Dean of the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy at the O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, Haryana, since August 2012. He is a lapsed economist having once obtained an M.A. in economics from D-School. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, got an M.Phil. in Politics. He was a junior research fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge, U.K., where he did research on the interface of law and economics and explored how judges grasp, or fail to grasp, issues related to legislation on economic policies. He has nearly thirty years’ experience as a development practitioner, having worked as a programme officer in the Ford Foundation’s South Asia Office, and as a policy advisor in the United Nations Development Programme, in India, Indonesia, the Oslo Governance Centre, and the UNDP regional centre serving all Asian countries, located in Bangkok.
Related Events : Talks
'How to Bring the "Public" Back into India’s Public Policies' a talk by Prof. Sudarshan Ramaswamy at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 21st January 2014
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Tuesday, January 21, 2014
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