Public Policy as an Instrument of Socio-Economic Development in India

Public policy is the principle guide to actions taken by the administrative executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues, in a consistent manner with law and institutional customs. 

Meaning of Public Policy

The term policy connotes two meanings. First, it refers to the ways of doing things. Secondly, policies may refer to substantive programmes. Public policy refers to the policy of government and used in both the senses. Studies of public policy not only making examine of what the government is doing but also how it is doing. It also examines how the content of the programme or policy is administered.

The concept of public policy was originated in 1951 with the publication of Harold Lasswell and Daniel Learns, “The Policy Sciences; Recent Development in Scope and Method”.

According to Thomas R Dye, “Public policy is whether government chooses to do or to its environment. In Indian context, public policy could be defined as government rules and programmes consider individually or collectively ie. the authoritative decisional output of a political system in forms of laws, ordinances, court decision, executive orders, decisions or even unwritten understanding of what is to be done.

Policy implies a decision as to what shall be done and how, when and where. In the words of Appleby, the essence of public administrative decision policy can be broadly defined as a purposed course of action of individual, group, institution or government to realise a specific objective or purpose, within a given environment.

Sometime, policy-making is confused with decision. Public policy is known to be built up by/of a complex set of secondary policies and decisions resulting from high level decisions interacting with middle level operational decisions. The process flows both top to bottom and bottom to top or even simultaneously both way.

Component of Public Policy

Public policy has a vast horizon and day by day its scope is enhancing due to privatisation, globalisation and urbanisation. It consists of many components. Austin Ranney gives five components of public policy. These are

1. A particular object or set of objects.

2. A desired course of events.

3. A selected line of action.

4. A declaration of intent.

5. An implementation of intent.

Policy formulation is necessary prior to every action in every form of organisation whether private or public. It is a pre-requisite for all management activity. It is a policy, which lays down the framework within which the organisational goals are set for accomplishment at middle and lower tiers respectively.

The objectives of an organisation, often vague and general, are concretised by way of policy goals which set administrative wheels in motion. Policy formulation is one of the vital tasks of any government.

Dimension of Public Policy

Public policy is a multifaceted instrument of the government and administration. It has various dimensions such as follows:

• Purposive or result oriented action rather than random behaviour is the hallmark of public policy. Public policies in modern political systems are not change happenings.
• Public policy refers to the action or decisional pattern of public administrators on a particular issue over a period rather than their separate discrete decisions on that matter is an ad-hoc fashion.
• A particular policy is what government actually do and what subsequently happen rather than what they intend to do or they are going to do.
• Public policy atleast in its definition may be either positive or negative. Positively it may involve some form of government actions regarding any issue or problem. Negatively, it may involve a decision by government officials not to take action on a matter on which government opinion or action is asked for.
• Public policy atleast in its positive form is based on law and is authoritative. It has legal sanctions behind it which is potentially coercive in nature and is binding on all citizens. This is the main difference between public policy and policies of private organisation.

Nature of Public Policy

A policy may be general or specific, broad or narrow, simple or complex, public or private, written or unwritten, explicit or implicit, discretionary or detailed and qualitative or quantitative which is what a government chooses as guidance for action.

From the view point of public policy, activities of government can be put into three categories

(i) Activities, which are attached to specific policies,

(ii) Activities, which are general in nature and

(iii) Activities, which are based on vague and inconsistent policies.

However in practice, a government really has a set of guiding principle for all its activities. Important public policies of government are often made more explicit, particularly where the issue of a law, regulation or a plan is involved. It is true that a public policy is often subject to different interpretations. For example, the Supreme Court of India may through its decisions give new interpretation to some of the Article of the Constitution which may amount to a new policy.

A public policy may cover a major portion of its activities, which are consistent with the development policy. Socio-economic development, equality or liberty or self-reliance or similar broad principles of guidance for action may be adopted such as family planning. A public policy may also be applied to all people in a country or it may be limited to a section of its people.

Beside, each level of government at central, state and local may have its specific or general policies. There are also mega policies. According to Dror, mega also policies form a kind of master policy. All policies generally contain definite goals or objective in more implicit or explicit terms.