IIM-B’s think tank crosses milestone

Centre for Public Policy offers consultation for events as diverse as the Kumbh Mela and the Asha maternity campaign

The Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management-Bengaluru (IIMB)’s think tank, has entered its 20th year.

One of the projects it worked on was related to maternal health with the Karnataka government. It equipped Asha workers with the latest technology to collect data and found that a key aspect leading to maternal deaths was the time taken to get to a health-care facility.

Established in 2000 through a partnership with the central government and the United Nations Development Programme, the centre has offered consultation to governments and NGOs across the country.

While consulting is an ongoing process, the centre’s everyday activity revolves around teaching. It offers three programmes: PhD programme, MBA in public policy and the newly added Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship.

Helmed by award-winning faculty such as Gita Sen and Hema Swaminathan, it is now headed by M S Sriram.

“The Centre is special and unique in many ways and actively engages with multiple stakeholders -- academics, policy makers, private sector enterprises, students or anybody interested in the broad field of public policy. We are not only about policy analysis, but we also actively engage in the cycle of policy formulation, implementation, evaluation and reformulation,” Sriram, who is also the chair.

A group of professors from the think tank worked with the UP government to study the Kumbh Mela and suggest methods to manage the logistics.

Apart from academics and consulting, the centre hosts seminars, hackathons and an annual conference that is theme-based.

The seminars are now being conducted online and topics range from migrant workers and employment to freedom of speech within the government.

Earlier this year, the centre launched a series called Suvāda where two people with opposing views discuss policy aspects.

It is meant to be a civil conversation that exposes the audience to varying perspectives.

The first was on the Citizenship Amendment Act with Congress MP Rajeev Gowda and BJP leader Swapan Dasgupta.

The centre strives to make sure that public policy doesn’t remain in academic journals and research papers but has real-life impact.

Gandhi’s relevance underlined

‘The Centre Cannot Hold’ was the title of a talk by Tridip Suhrud, scholar, writer and translator at the IIM-B.

Suhrud works on the intellectual and cultural history of modern Gujarat and the Gandhian intellectual tradition.

“Gandhi’s major associates – friends as well as critics – looked upon Hind Swaraj as a folly. Savarkar thought it obscurantist, Nehru forgot it. No one thought it worthy of engagement in Gandhi’s lifetime.... Hind Swaraj is the only text Gandhi chose to translate himself,” he explained.

He said it was only in the aftermath of the Emergency (1975) that Indians looked at the text with seriousness.

“In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi spoke of modernity as ephemeral – a transient phenomenon. This made some read this text as anti-modern and it explains their unease with the text. But Gandhi was aware of modernity – of the flows of capital, of the role of the Empire and the colonies, of the role of migrant labour.”

He said Hind Swaraj, along with Joseph Kumarappa’s ‘Economy of Permanence’, speaks of limits to exploitation and recognises the structural nature of poverty and violence, making it relevant in the current context.

Suhrud said the modern state would not like us to be self-governing, only self-disciplined. “Hind Swaraj… provides both philosophical and political tools to challenge the two entities that govern our lives – the modern state and the modern corporation,” he said.

Quoting the poet W B Yeats in ‘The Second Coming’ (‘Things Fall Apart/ The centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/…The Ceremony of innocence is drowned’…), he spoke about ideas contained in Hind Swaraj written by Gandhi in 1909.