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Is There an Indian Policy Process? An Investigation into Two Social Policy Processes
Author(s) -
Mooij Jos
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2007.00556.x
Subject(s) - legitimacy , argument (complex analysis) , context (archaeology) , politics , process (computing) , political economy , political science , core (optical fiber) , democracy , policy making , social policy , economic system , sociology , economics , public administration , law , paleontology , chemistry , computer science , biology , operating system , materials science , composite material , biochemistry
India is a huge, poor, fast developing, centralized and increasingly unequal, democratic country. The core argument of this article is that these and other contextual factors have an impact on the way in which social policies are formulated and implemented. The focus of the article is on two such policies on food and primary education. Based on secondary material and own fieldwork, the shaping of these two policies is discussed and some major characteristics of the two social policy processes are highlighted. This analysis brings to light the existence of two paradoxes present in social policy processes in India: one related to the fact that social policies are important for regime legitimacy but nevertheless suffer from a lack of political commitment; the other related to the fact that centralized decision‐making goes together with the widespread involvement of local politicians in policy implementation. These two paradoxes, the article concludes, are the result of the wider context in which social policies are shaped and are hence not easily resolved.