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About This Webinar
Jindal School of Government and Public Policy

Jindal School of Government and Public Policy (JSGP) is engaging with the contemporary policy environment, which demands new imaginations, new methodologies and even a revitalized ethics.

JSGP aims to promote research that facilitates better understanding of issues relating to governance and public policy. The programmes that the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy offers bear in mind the contribution that the faculty and the students of the school can make towards meeting the challenges of governance and improving the efficiency of government in India, while drawing upon comparative and international perspectives.

JSGP intends to promote inter-disciplinary studies and joint teaching and research programmes in partnership with the schools of law, business and international affairs, Liberal Arts & Humanities.
Agenda
  • Social science knowledge helps us imagine alternative futures. Technological advances (robotics, Artifiical Intelligence) present us with a bewildering range of ethical, legal and social issues. We need social science to analyse and critique what’s going on. That way we can make informed choices that shape the future.
  • Social scientists (including economists, psychologists, sociologists and political scientists) can help us understand economic crises and weigh up decisions we make for ourselves and those which governments make on our behalf. With the knowledge and understanding that social science offers us, we will feel empowered to act for ourselves, and to influence decisions being made on our behalf.
  • Social science knowledge is essential for society to create public intellectuals. Public intellectuals must take positions independent of those in power, must be seen as autonomous, and question received wisdom. In addition to possessing an acknowledged professional status, they must have a concern for rights of citizens, issues of social justice”, and must be ready to raise these matters as public policy.
  • Social science can help us make an impact on the world around us by observing and systematically report on conditions that affect society as a means for change and improvement. Social science research is more likely to be used by policymakers when it is timely and relevant, and delivered in the context of trusting interpersonal connections.
  • We recognize the importance of the natural sciences in investigating the physical world, understanding epidemiology of pandemics like Covid-19. But actual prevention of disease and ability to induce people to change their behaviour for the better, in order to control the spread of an infection, is a social and political problem. It requires an understanding of political institutions, public management, and policy implementation. Social science helps people understand how to interact with the social world—how to influence policy, develop networks, increase government accountability, and promote democracy.
  • Social scientists who work in interdisciplinary teams have made their mark in the area of human welfare and development. They are concerned with the social and economic advancement of humanity at large. They work with government institutions, UN organisations, social services, funding agencies, and with the media. They are influencing the work of strategists, planners, teachers and programme officers in developing and growing economies.
  • An Illustration: Reetika Khera at Delhi School of Economics and Nandini Nayak at School of Oriental and African Studies, London, surveyed 1060 NREGA workers conducted in May-June 2008 in six Hindi-speaking states of North India. They highlighted the impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act on the lives of women workers. They found the law provided opportunities for some women to become wage earners where none had existed before, reduced the risk of hunger and their chances of avoiding hazardous work. But they also identified barriers to women benefitting from the changes, including harassment at the worksite. Others working in development studies can go on to support women’s ability to benefit by minimum wage and employment guarantee law by finding creative solutions to problems identified in the survey.
Presenters
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    Prof. Sudarshan Ramaswamy
    Professor and Dean, Executive Director, Centre for Global Governance and Policy
    Prof. Ramaswamy Sudarshan has had distinguished careers in the domains of research, development programming and governance. After he obtained a Master’s degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics he was elected to a Rhodes scholarship. He joined Balliol College, University of Oxford, and obtained a Master’s degree in Politics in 1977. He was elected to a research fellowship at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, where he studied judicial review of economic legislation by the Supreme Court of India, specializing in the interface of law and economics. In 1983 he was a visiting scholar in the School of International Development, University of East Anglia.
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    Prof. (Dr.) Kaveri Ishwar Haritas
    Associate Professor & Associate Dean
    Prof. (Dr.) Kaveri Haritas is Associate Professor at the Jindal School of Government & Public Policy. She has a bachelor’s degree in law, a Masters and PhD. In Development Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. She was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation for her doctoral studies (CanDoc), which examines the struggles of poor women and men in a rehabilitation area in Bangalore. Her research focuses on the politics of the poor, the role that gender plays in everyday politics and struggles and the manner in which this shapes citizenship and the role of the state. After her doctoral research, she took part in an international research project on the solidarity economy practices of women in Latin America and India, supported by the Swiss Network of International Studies. In this research, she continued to work on women’s struggles for survival, examining a fisherwomen’s association in Udupi, Karnataka. With an education in development studies, she has a marked leaning towards anthropology, uses ethnography in her research and enjoys research and teaching in the areas of political and economic anthropology. Her recent research interrogates the future of work in a world of technological unemployment, examining the potential of technology to transform both the structures and meanings of work in the contemporary world. She has also been a north-south mobility fellow at the Institute for Research on Development, Paris.
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