A computer science and business management alumnus of Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru and IIM-Bangalore, Sridhar Pabbisetty is founding director of the Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad (estb.2020). Its mission is to “empower leaders who solve 21st century problems through rigorous public policy education”. Earlier, Prof. Pabbisetty was chief operating officer of the Centre for Public Policy, IIM-Bangalore and also served as the chief programs officer at the Bangalore Political Action Committee. Prior to that, he worked with several hi-tech companies including Zyme Solutions, Aditi Technologies and iCOPE Technologies. Excerpts from a 40-minute video interview (www.educationworld.in) What are the aims and objectives of the Kautilya School of Public Policy (KSPP)? Kautilya’s vision is to “rebalance the role of society, government and business towards an equitable and regenerative India and world”. Our mission is “empowering leaders who solve 21st century problems, through rigorous public policy education”. We offer passionate young minds a robust training ground that nurtures grassroots aspirations with rigorous academic programmes. Most of India’s think tanks are sited in Delhi. How accurate would it be to say that a major factor behind the location of KSPP in Hyderabad is that inputs from southern states and peninsular intellectuals are also required to shape public policy? At Kautilya, we strongly believe in cooperative federalism. While it’s true, and possibly appropriate, that Delhi-based think tanks heavily inform national policy decisions, we believe attention needs to be paid to perspectives from other parts of the country. Our location in Hyderabad gives us that opportunity to maintain a healthy distance from Delhi, while remaining in touch with the rest of India. Another advantage of our location in Hyderabad is the opportunity it provides to leverage the uniqueness of this city as the gateway to the South. For the past four decades, the southern states have pioneered new-age industries — IT, ITES and biotechnology. The entrepreneurial buzz of Hyderabad not only offers freshness of perspective, but also opportunity to leverage policy innovations from the fastest growing hubs of India — Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. The popular belief is that India’s think tanks and the academy have had little success in shaping public policy. What’s your comment? The impact of think tanks and academia in policy formulation is not easily visible. Yet the truth is that think tanks and academic institutions have been continuously influencing and shaping public policy formulation. Indeed think tanks have fleshed out major policy decisions such as OBC quotas in government and education institutions and creation of Telangana state. During my stint at IIM-Bangalore at the Centre for Public Policy, we worked closely with state government ministries to launch impactful projects. For instance, the Karnataka government’s Right to Public Service Delivery programme was enriched with periodic and timely inputs from IIM-B. Currently, this nationally unique programme provides over 1,000 services with clear documentation, targets and process details from 95 government departments. The public needs to be made aware of such interventions made by academia and think tanks. We also need to…
