Eighth Annual International Conference on Public Policy and Management (2013)

CPP hosted the 8th Annual International Conference on Public Policy and Management from 12-14 August 2013. The special theme for the conference was INFRASTRUCTURE: Hard and Soft.

The conference was inaugurated by Shri B K Chaturvedi, Member of the Planning Commission, on 12 August 2013 and the plenary address was delivered by Professor Gita Sen, IIMB, on 13 August 2013. The conference ended with a valedictory address by Professor Rahul De’, IIMB, on 14 August 2013. On 13 August, CPP also hosted 'Gender Narratives from Kampala, Kabul and Bangalore', an informal evening of conversations on global perspectives on gender issues with women members of parliament and government from Uganda and Afghanistan, UN Women India, women's organizations and academicians.

The three-day international event saw a submission of 165 papers from over 10 countries. About 50 papers were accepted for presentations at the conference. In addition to this, an additional set of 20 papers were presented as short oral presentations.

There were seven invited panels and four roundtable discussions that were well received by the audience. Some of the seven invited panels made significant contributions to constitute a 'Track' such as the Gender and Infrastructure Track organized by Dr Shreyasi Jha (UN Women), the ICT and Public Policy Track organized by Professor Monica Singhania (University of Delhi) and Dr Ranjini C R (IIMB), and the Affordable Housing Track organized by Ramana Tadepalli (IIMB). Others were single-panel sessions that profiled emerging public policy concerns such as with the Roundtable on Environmental Fiscal Reforms, organized by Dr Ashish Chaturvedi (GIZ), and Issues in Sub-national Governance organized by Prof Upinder Sawhney (University of Punjab) and the Delivery of Urban Services organized by Professor G Ramesh (IIMB) and Professor Gopal Naik (IIMB).

Eminent scholars discussed a wide range of issues such as: India vs. China: comparison in infrastructure progress; the policy implications of cybercrime and cyber security in India; the technological advances affecting the IT services trade; the challenges of implementing India's national e-governance plan; urban transport; water issues; and the "epidemic" of sexual violence in Delhi's public spaces under various conference tracks, including Gender and Infrastructure, Financing Infrastructure, Shaping New Cities, Urban Governance, Information and Communication Technologies, Development and Trade.

The Second Policy Hackathon was organized on 14 August, during the conference. It witnessed 23 teams presenting specific policy issue talks on health, education, sanitation, and poverty. The Evaluation team for the competition comprised Varsha Joshi, Director, Census Operations, Registrar General of India; Sridhar Pabbisetty, Consultant, Government of Karnataka; Hema Swaminathan, Assistant Professor, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB; and Arnab Mukherji, Assistant Professor, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB.

Vipul Mathur, Ramprasad Alva, Avadhooth Jathar and Purnima Prakash from Team Cloud won the Hackathon by showcasing how the government's electrification programme had a crowding-in effect of personal expenditure on education (tuition, books, newspapers, etc). They concluded that such a synergy between two seemingly orthogonal policy areas, namely electrification and education, can have broader implications for effective policy execution.