We discussed on the following papers in the past two meetings:

1) Making Services Work for Poor People by Shantayanan Devarajan and Ritva Reinikka

2) Improving Governance to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty by Regina Birner

3) Governance and Public Management, an Introduction by Carolyn J. Hill and Lawrence E. Lynn Jr.

4) Public Policy Making in India: Issues and Remedies by O. P. Agarwal and T. V. Somanathan.

The papers are attached.

The first two papers are concerned with a classification system for service provisioning and accounting. The third paper talks about a framework that models relationships between various entities:
their management, output, and inputs. Understanding the model will help create the right policies, and also help the research community understand their results better. Finally, the last paper studies the apolitical issues in policy making in India and proposes remedies for it.

These papers provide us with background to explore different avenues in policy making. Possible areas of exploration includes:

1. Policy for a particular sector, the benefits, drawbacks, factors that were ignored, success/failure etc.

2. Details of a policy, such as why the need for the policy, how were the actual numbers decided and how do policy makers move from statistics to policies.

3. Case study and analysis of a policy implementation in a sector which includes the role of administrative bodies, academia, non-governmental bodies in the concerned sector, and public.

4. Details of monitoring and impact assessment for successful policy implementation and what kind of data collection and feedback loops exist, or should exist.

As suggested by Adi, a possible vertical for exploration can be to read a report by the planning commission on the management of ground water in a sustainable way.