Public Policy
What stops
vehicles and factories from filling your lungs with polluted air or a car from running you over on the road? What determines the sanctity of your hard work at an office or who gets to study what? All these daily situations that we take for granted are governed by public policy (the reason also why politics is an inseparable part of our lives). Without an understanding of public policy, one can neither find what is wrong in our society, nor what can be improved. With a famously corrupt and sluggish bureaucracy like India’s, it has become all the more important for the next generation to be more efficient and alert in order to weed out the non-performers in the system. Today, they have an opportunity to learn from the best at the rising number of special schools that focus on public policy.
Top institutes offer students a comprehensive post-graduate arts degree in public policy. They encourage students to gain as much experience as they can through hands-on internships and projects in partnership with government and industry stakeholders. These twoyear courses are multidisciplinary in nature, covering a variety of topics within sociology, politics, economics, law, history, philosophy, ethics and even the natural sciences. Within this course, one is taught developmental economics, rural societies, data analysis and methods of collecting and analysing data among others. The Jindal School of Government and Policy also has a policy action lab (part of the curriculum) where scholars, citizens, policymakers and activists are invited to the university to brainstorm and debate with students and work on experimental projects.