Public policy education in India deserves much greater attention SURESH PRABHU & SHOBHIT MATHUR
A wider and better understanding of India’s challenges could improve our policymaking processes
are, respectively, a former Union cabinet minister and vice chancellor, Rishihood University.
India’s rapid economic growth and increasingly complex social and public challenges underscore the need for robust public-policy education. However, public policy programmes fall short of adequately preparing the next generation of policymakers, civil servants and engaged citizens.
Traditionally, public policy education in India has been confined to post-graduate degree programmes, often offered in isolation from the real-world complexities that policymakers face. These programmes focus on theoretical frameworks and case studies from the West, without addressing the unique social, cultural and political dynamics that shape policy challenges in India.
To truly empower the country’s citizens and public sector, public-policy education must evolve to become more accessible, practical and contextually relevant. This means expanding the avenues through which people can engage with public policy beyond the traditional degree programme format.
To begin with, public-policy education should be integrated into the curriculum of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across all disciplines. Even students pursuing degrees in engineering, business or arts should be exposed to the basics of public policy, systems thinking and the role of citizens in shaping their communities. This cross-pollination of ideas will help forth a generation of problemsolvers who understand the interconnected nature of societal challenges and are able to contribute meaningfully to policymaking processes.
Education does not end with graduation. Executive programmes on public policy matters should be made available to working professionals across diverse sectors. Many of the most pressing policy issues—from urban planning and environmental protection to healthcare and education—have become ubiquitous concerns in the workplace. By offering executive-level programmes, workshops and short courses, we can equip professionals with the knowledge to navigate these complex challenges, ultimately improving the quality of decision-making and service delivery.
It is not obvious but important to recognize that public-policy education can also play a key role in empowering the country’s entrepreneurs. Too often, budding business aspirants become so sharply focused on developing products or services that they fail to adequately consider the domestic and international regulations that can significantly impact their operations. Many owners of startups only realize the importance of public policy when they encounter unexpected legal or bureaucratic hurdles that threaten the viability of their ventures. By integrating public policy curricula into entrepreneurship programmes and offering specialized courses for business founders, we can equip the next generation of business leaders with a deeper understanding of the policymaking landscape.
This will not only help entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of regulation and compliance, but also enable them to become active advocates of policy reforms that support innovation and the growth of small businesses. As India positions itself as a global hub for entrepreneurship, public-policy education could become instrumental in fostering a thriving, informed and resilient startup ecosystem.
Public policy is a fascinating subject. The pedagogy should leverage innovative delivery formats, such as immersive travel programmes, hybrid models for working professionals and intensive summer schools. These alternative models can provide learners with hands-on experience, exposure to diverse perspectives and opportunities for collaborative problem-solving, all of which are crucial for developing a nuanced understanding of public policy. Through immersive learning, learners can engage with a wide range of experts from policymakers and civil society leaders to academics and social entrepreneurs. This multidisciplinary approach will not only deepen their knowledge, but also foster a network of like-minded individuals who can share ideas and work together long after the academic programme has ended.
The ultimate goal of re-imagined public policy education should be to create a more informed, engaged and empowered citizenry. When people from all walks of life have a deeper understanding of the policymaking process and the ways in which they can influence it, they become more invested in the well-being of their communities and the country as a whole.
Moreover, by exposing a diverse pool of talented individuals to the challenges and complexities of public service, such programmes can help create a robust pipeline of future leaders for the public sector. Local governments, state agencies and national ministries could tap this talent pool, attracting the brightest minds to tackle the country’s most pressing issues.
In a time of rapid change and rising uncertainty, India needs a public-policy ecosystem that is responsive and capable of addressing the unique needs of its people. By rethinking the way we approach public-policy education, we can encourage a new generation of engaged citizens and policy entrepreneurs to help us collectively shape a brighter future for the nation.
After being saddled for years with the biggest bundle of bad loans anywhere in the world, India’s financial system had only recently found its footing. But with profitability at a decade high and capitalization in excess of the regulatory minimum, the country’s banks have begun slipping again. This time, they’re falling on the banana peel of technology.
The latest casualty is Kotak Mahindra Bank. Last week, the regulator ordered what was until recently India’s fourth-largest lender by market value to stop taking new customers via its online and mobile banking channels and refrain from issuing fresh credit cards. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it had found “serious deficiencies” in how the bank manages user access, vendor risk and data security. This is stiff punishment. More than 98% of the transaction volume in Kotak’s savings accounts were from digital or non-branch methods in the December quarter; 99% of new credit cards and 95% of personal loans it sold were also online. While Kotak says it has already taken some steps and will “swiftly resolve balance issues at the earliest,” the brazenness of last year’s scam at UCO Bank is likely to make RBI cautious in lifting the ban. UCO is a small, state-owned lender based in Kolkata. Last November, it found some customers had got nearly $100 million via interbank electronic fund transfers, but accounts at the sending institutions hadn’t been debited.
This month, investigators said that this was no error, but a scam. A couple of outside engineers had allegedly fiddled with UCO’s servers, creating money out of thin air, and crediting it to different accounts. Several account holders made “wrongful gains by withdrawing the proceeds,” according to the bank’s police complaint.
This is the crux of the issue. RBI’s press release highlighted “frequent and significant outages in the last two years” in Kotak’s services that inconvenienced customers. While these are annoying, the big risk is a UCO Bank-type scenario where the same money can be spent twice because it shows up in two accounts. If something like that happens at scale, it could pose serious risks to financial stability. All benefits from digitization pale in front of such a threat.
Digitization has undoubtedly brought benefits, particularly to non-state-owned lenders. Take Kotak, which now has 8.5% of the deposits of State Bank of India (SBI), compared with less than 6% seven years ago. This gain didn’t take a commensurate expansion in physical presence. SBI has added nearly 5,000 branches since 2016 — 10 times as many as Kotak. Even as they have gained from it, banks paid insufficient attention to tech. In December 2020, RBI barred HDFC Bank, India’s largest private lender, from issuing new credit cards and launching fresh digital initiatives. The card ban was lifted after eight months; the digital blockade lasted over a year.
This isn’t just an Indian problem. Singapore’s DBS Group, which has aspired to rank alongside some of the world’s most admired tech brands, has also stumbled on small things like an overheated data centre.
In India, fintech sped up money transactions, but it has also meant complexity. An otherwise staid banking system, running software on servers on bank premises, faces a tsunami of tiny transactions coming via intermediaries that mostly do cloud computing. A widely used smartphonebased protocol, UPI, logged more than 100 billion transactions last year. There are some 50 million merchants accepting online money via QR codes, but the regulator isn’t sure if all are legit. Fast and furious may have opened the floodgates to fraud.
A rattled RBI is in a mood to punish. Earlier, it instructed Paytm, the homegrown payments pioneer, to freeze its banking business because of persistent non-compliance. Separately, it asked Visa Inc to stop the use of its business cards for commercial payments with a fintech firm in between.
Drastic supervisory steps may be necessary at times, but they will not be enough. The Indian regulator needs to update its own understanding of technology—the last edition of RBI’s 164-page financial stability report devoted a mere four paragraphs to digital safety, even though the central bank’s survey showed cybersecurity as a “high-risk” category.
Threat levels are rising. A 2022 study by DeepStrat, a New Delhi-based consulting firm, had raised concerns about what it called a “fraud stack”—a large number of bank accounts “controlled by crime cartels without their owners being aware of their identities being misused,” as explained by Anand Venkatanarayanan, one of the report’s authors.
In one instance, the customer’s address in a bank’s records was the same as that of the bank branch. When such mule accounts hide in plain sight, attacks become highly probable.