Punjab should use its intellectual capital for policymaking
Punjab’s public policymaking does not factor in the state’s intellectual capital. Policymakers and intellectuals work in isolation, resulting in suboptimal policy outcomes. The world over, a paradigm shift in the form of evidence-based policy has taken place in which research plays a pivotal role. Thus, it is the right time to bridge the gap between policymaking and intellectual capital in Punjab.
Policymaking consists of three stages. During the first stage, the policy problem which needs to be addressed is identified. Then, the alternative courses of action to resolve the problem are suggested. Subsequently, the executive/legislature selects one of the alternatives.
In Punjab, the policy problems are identified mainly by the executive and senior administrators. The alternatives are prepared by in-house teams of administrative departments. The alternatives approved become the policy. This top-down policymaking approach, devoid of inputs from researchers and other stakeholders, results in poor outcomes. For better results, an evidence-based approach to policymaking is needed.
Punjab has more than 30 universities, six national laboratories and research institutes, a number of technical, management, and medical research institutes along with a couple of social sciences research think tanks. These institutions have been undertaking voluminous research, including on Punjab, for publication and registering patents. However, the findings rarely prompt the government to take follow-up action. Even the results of studies commissioned by the government itself are rarely used in policy formulation. This reveals that the huge knowledge capital of the state remains underutilised for policymaking.
The demand-supply gap of research for policymaking is due to differences in the perspectives, values, goals and time scales of the policymakers and researchers. Policymakers feel that researchers shy away from policy research and the policy-related research that they undertake is overly technical and, hence, difficult to comprehend from the policymaking perspective.
On the other hand, researchers are mainly engaged in research for publications and registering patents. They think that policymakers want quick results, while research is a long-drawn process. The transfer of research for policy purposes and the market, thus, is not the general rule.
The policymakers and researchers in Punjab, thus, constitute two separate communities and cultures, lacking effective communication channels. Researchers working on Punjab’s issues are committed to the cause of the state. The Punjab Government should harness this commitment by using their work in policymaking. The researchers should also introspect about their perspectives towards policy and market-relevant research.
Two cases of transfer of technology from the lab to the market during my tenure as Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University (2017-20) highlight that researchers should be made aware that policy-centric and market-relevant research is not only academically stimulating and but also financially rewarding. For scaling up the transfer of research to applied areas, the universities need to build the capacity of researchers.
The state government has already taken a couple of initiatives by inviting experts for policymaking. Recently, an 11-member committee having a mix of civil servants, experts and stakeholders was formed for drafting the agriculture policy. Earlier, while preparing the Budget and the Punjab Industrial Policy 2022, inputs were invited from the stakeholders, including experts. Similarly, the Punjab School Education Policy 2020 was drafted by a committee comprising academicians, administrators and other stakeholders. Such good practices should be institutionalised across all sectors.
To foster collaboration between policymakers and researchers, four institutional mechanisms are suggested.
First, on the pattern of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, an economic advisory council to the CM should be constituted. It may have a chairperson and full-time and part-time members. Its major function should be to render advice to the CM about economic development, agriculture, industry and service sector, fiscal health, Centre-state financial relations, investment, employment and application of smart technologies like AI and data analytics in development. It may also prepare periodic reports of the economies of Punjab and other states for formulating the economic policy.
Second, the Punjab State Planning Board has traditionally functioned as a policy think tank. After the abolition of the Planning Commission, the board was reorganised as the Economic Policy and Planning Board, with the objective of advising the government on policy matters. For achieving this objective, the board should be professionalised on the pattern of NITI Aayog and the Kerala State Planning Board. Learning from these models, one of the vice-chairpersons should be an expert; similarly, along with ex-officio members, experts with policy domain knowledge should be inducted in the board. In the internal organisation, each unit of the board should be steered by an expert.
Third, each administrative department may have an advisory board comprising experts and ex-officio members for giving advice about sectoral policies. The advisory board should have organic links with the planning board by making the chairperson of each advisory board a member of the latter.
Fourth, the research institutes should set up public policy centres. These centres should undertake policy research and prepare, in simple language, policy briefs of the research and communicate to the research departments the policy needs of the government. The Punjab Government may also constitute a public policy unit in the planning board for coordinating with the policy centres by receiving policy briefs from them and conveying the research needs of the government to them. Punjabi University, Panjab University and the Institute for Development and Communication already have public policy centres.
