Abstract
The success and resilience of Indian democracy in the wake of deep economic inequalities, coupled with immense sociocultural heterogeneities, continue to baffle political scientists (Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, & Limongi, 2000; Varshney, 2014). Despite limited apparent success in ameliorating the socio-economic deprivations of a large portion of its population, India’s political system continues to draw hope from nearly all constituents. Voters, including the poor, continue to turn up in large numbers and often change political regimes (Mehta, 2012; Varshney, 2017). It is imperative to understand India’s policy processes better, to analyse what sustains and keeps this ‘improbable democracy’ (Varshney, 2014) relevant for its masses. How do the opinions and aspirations of the common man influence, if at all, the policies of the day? What interplay of forces, institutions, ideas and interests shapes India’s public policy? How do institutional and non-institutional actors engage to influence policy? What are the boundaries, rules, norms and the underlying grammar of this engagement? How responsive is the policy apparatus to the perceived problems and changing ground realities of India’s vast and diverse population? These are all crucial questions for developing an understanding of India’s democracy, its political system and its prospects for shaping the destinies of over one-sixth of the world’s population. This book provides an original enquiry into the policy process that seeks to answer the aforementioned questions while unpacking the cognitive, institutional, political and social context that guides policymaking in India.
The authors attempt to develop a theoretical framework to explain: ‘(a) why do governments pay attention to some problems and not others? (b) How are policy options formulated? and (c) why does policy change?’ (p. 38). The authors take on the ambitious task of sifting through the mechanics of individual laws and campaigns leading up to them, so as to discern the pattern of policy evolution. The attempt is to identify a ‘method in the madness’ (p. 302) which can characterize the evolution of individual policies. While some policies like The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013 get enacted within a few months, others like the Lokpal and Lokayukts Act 2013 have to wait for almost half a century. Others like the Microfinance Bill even fail to see the light of the day. At the outset, the authors are humble about the ambitious nature of this enquiry and allude to the near impossibility of finding easy or universal answers. They, however, remain motivated by the critical importance of the endeavour (p. 3). Their methodological approach is an analysis of the ‘fit’ of the extant theories of the legislative process with nine carefully chosen case studies comprising landmark laws/bills legislated over 1999–2014 spanning a wide range of subjects—‘social, political, economic, and environmental’ (p. 6).
The book covers a broad sweep of some of the major theories that have dominated the policy formulation literature in the west—the stages heuristic model, the arenas of power approach/typology framework, bounded rationality and incrementalism, public choice and Tiebout theory, subsystems theory, institutional rational choice framework, multiple streams approach, advocacy coalition framework, punctuated equilibrium framework and theories of policy diffusion (Chapter 2). The relevance of these theories to the Indian context is assessed by comparing their fit to nine legislative case studies. The case studies present rich empirical material including detailed background and historical context to the policy issue at hand, the key formal and informal actors, the nature of key contestations, advocacy tactics, crucial events in the pre-legislative and legislative journey and the formal legislative journey in parliament (Chapters 3–11). These case studies have been painstakingly assembled combining secondary data and primary interviews with some of the most important stakeholders involved in the journey of these legislations including bureaucrats, politicians, activists and experts (p. 7).
While the case study approach is usually ideal for a holistic, in-depth investigation of a particular case/event, the authors have used this methodology innovatively to discern the policy process across the laws of interest. In the process, the authors have developed an important baseline in identifying the key policy triggers, strategies and influences governing the Indian policy process. The methodological choice implies that the authors have decided not to forgo the richness of the empirical context in an attempt to come up with generalizable theories. The conclusions and their generalizability do, however, remain limited by the methodological choice, a point duly acknowledged by the authors (p. 36). Thus, the book only provides tentative recommendations on the applicability of certain theories to the Indian context without attempting any conclusive testing of the extant theories. The conclusions are also limited by the authors’ choice of case studies. The authors have done an admirable job of selecting some of the most important and rich legislative exercises over the last two decades. However, any such choice always remains prone to missing out on some important policy stakeholders or glossing over a few important dimensions of policy contestations. For instance, the coverage of environmental stakeholders and the lawmaking process remains under-represented. Similarly, laws that saw the involvement of competing social movements or large-scale intra-community differences remain under-represented in the authors’ choice set. These shortcomings could potentially have been avoided with a choice of similar landmark laws like The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (Kumar & Kerr, 2012) and the Communal Violence Bill, 2011. Similarly, legislations championed by the executive like the Companies Act 2013 and The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016 find limited space, which leads the authors to perhaps prematurely conclude that ‘India’s policy process is reactive rather than proactive’ (p. 66). Another important caveat inherent in the methodological choice is that this book only covers policymaking at the national/central level. It, thus, keeps the significant legislative activity at the subnational/federal levels out of the purview of the book.
The detailed case studies masterfully compile the journeys of individual policies while also drawing out commonalities. It is abundantly clear from these case studies that the policy process is unlikely to have a specific beginning or end, rather unfolding in ‘fits and starts, with no permanent resolutions’ (p. 302). Often, the existing policy itself creates conditions for change, and the fragmented nature of Indian political system and institutional architecture provides opportunities for reform, which policy entrepreneurs and activists can exploit to push through the legislative agenda. For instance, the repeated injustice meted out to the displaced communities because of the Land Acquisition Act 1894 created conditions for the rise of social movements and led to several interventions by the courts, eventually creating the stimulus for the 2013 legislation (Chapter 11). While some changes are incremental and result from a prolonged consultative process among the policy stakeholders (Chapters 3, 5 and 6), others result from certain trigger events that disrupt the status quo leading to time-bound rapid enactment (Chapters 8–11). The importance of existing institutions like government-appointed committees, judicial mandates, the National Advisory Council and even the CAG in pushing the policy issue to the forefront of the policy agenda stands out. At the same time, the case studies highlight Indian polity’s remarkable flexibility in creating new institutional mechanisms to resolve contestations and enable policymaking in a time-bound manner. For instance, the Justice Verma commission was set up, in the wake of a gruesome rape, to come up with amendments to sexual harassment laws (Chapter 8), and a joint civil society-government committee was formed to debate the draft Lokpal law (Chapter 10). The civil society and advocacy groups emerge as the vital change agents in nearly all the chosen case studies. They adopt a multitude of tactics and strategies ranging from sit-ins and demonstrations, media campaigns, social media mobilizations to representations before influential bureaucrats and government bodies. While the role of civil society and activism is duly recognized, the importance of judicial activism and its use as an alternate forum for activists to steer important policy changes have remained underemphasized. The authors acknowledge the use of public interest litigations (PILs) as a peculiar Indian innovation. However, the contribution of judiciary in pushing through important policy changes through judicial mandates and orders has perhaps not been appreciated enough. Indian judiciary has been progressively keen to read several distributive policy issues like education, food, information, and so on into the charter of fundamental rights, thereby making it imperative for the government to come up with suitable laws, examples of which abound in nearly all the authors’ case studies. The advocacy groups have also attempted to secure judicial mandates to alter the relative power balance, in the process opening up new dimensions of conflict between judiciary and executive.
These case studies provide an insight into the complex and messy world of policymaking in India where the outcomes, duration, nature of negotiations and the grammar of engagement are determined by ‘bafflingly minute variations in a number of starting conditions’ (p. 302). The Lokpal Act dealing with corruption by public servants saw a rather cold response from political elite. It was discussed eight times in Parliament over four decades, before its enactment became inevitable in the wake of a wide-scale anti-corruption movement that capitalized on incidents of large-scale corruption using innovative tactics of protest (Chapter 10). On the other hand, the Competition Act 2002 and the Microfinance Bill 2012 saw a more collaborative journey where the political leadership actively sought to engage with stakeholders, albeit with different outcomes in terms of success of enactment (Chapters 3 and 7). Remarkably, the Food Security Act 2012 passed despite not being initially on the priority agenda of either the activists or the government. The foundations of this legislation were laid by an activist Supreme Court that issued various interim orders which provided an opportunity to various NGOs, and legal experts to mobilize around the cause and mount an effective confrontation with the executive (Chapter 9). Often, precipitating events help in overcoming policy inertia and lead to significant changes, even beyond the initial ambit of policy agenda. For instance, the gruesome rape of a young student in Delhi led to a rapid enactment of a strong sexual harassment law, which decades of advocacy had failed to achieve (Chapter 8). Similarly, images of rotten foodgrains in government-owned warehouses amidst starvation deaths created a powerful stimulus for the enactment of Food Security Act (Chapter 7).
The authors conclude that any one theory alone fails to explain the whole journey of a single legislation, leave alone explain the entire gamut of the lawmaking process across multiple policy arenas. According to the authors, the most suitable framework that seems to fit India’s policy process is a combination of punctuated equilibrium theory, multiple streams theory and the advocacy coalition framework. The authors further add a ‘legislative strategy framework’ to this theoretical mix. This framework encompasses analysis of legislative contestations on two axes comprising the proclivity of elected stakeholders to engage with the non-elected stakeholders (ranging from confrontational to cooperative) and the activism style adopted by the advocacy groups (ranging from conflictual to collaborative) (Chapter 12). However, it is not clear from the discussion why elected stakeholders would remain more open to reform and willing to engage with advocacy groups in certain policy arenas as opposed to others. Perhaps this calls for a perusal of the political theories on the nature of Indian state (Bardhan, 1999; Jenkins, 1999; Randeria, 2003; Rudolph & Rudolph, 1987), something that has remained uncovered in this book. As a result, the book’s promise of addressing the question of ‘why do governments pay attention to some problem and not others’ (p. 38) remains only partially addressed. Further, the usefulness of a rather static ‘legislative strategy framework’ for analysing the ever-changing strategies of advocacy groups and the dynamic nature of the policy process where governments respond differently at different points of time, also remains to be seen. The book’s exclusive focus on formulation of laws with limited analysis of subsequent implementation dynamics emerges as a limitation to discerning the likelihood of success of the policy post enactment. As a theoretical add on, it would have been important to identify elements in the policy process that determine whether a particular policy will be effectively implemented or be reduced to mere tokenism.
The authors advocate the use of ‘complexity theory’ for understanding policymaking in India. They argue that it explains the key characteristics of the policy process: interdependent parts of the policy subsystems, non-linear dynamics, emergent properties with limited central control, path dependence and long periods of inactivity with periods of punctuated equilibria (pp. 307–309). It calls for an interdisciplinary and pluralistic approach to policy studies, which the authors have carefully retained in their current investigation as well. A major contribution of this well-researched book is the assortment of detailed case studies that not only provide deep insights into the policymaking process in India but are also analytically condensed and suitably organized to provide pointers for further theorization. The discussion and insights from the text also raise important questions for further investigation. To what extent can the civil society groups influence the legislative process and challenge the validity of established parliamentary procedures for independent decision-making by elected representatives? How is the legislative process affected by questions of state capacity and autonomy? Is the policy process becoming more open and participative over time? If so, is it equally open to all segments of the population or place natural advantages to certain socio-economic segments or particular interest groups? How effective are Indian legislators in their dual role as guardians of national interest as well as representatives of their political constituents? Does the policymaking process differ at the subnational level? In short, this book is an important first step in navigating the messy field of policymaking in India, that manages to throw up as many questions as answers. Given the dearth of comparable works, this book has the potential to become an essential companion to scholars, practitioners and graduate students of policy studies in India.