#117 A Resignation

This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question:&#160;how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?<br/><br/>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at&#160;<a href="https://www.ad-auris.com/">Ad-Auris</a>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.<br/><br/>- RSJ<br/><br/>A short mid-week note on some points that have emerged from the <a href="https://scroll.in/latest/990121/circumstances-leading-to-my-exit-will-not-change-for-foreseeable-future-pb-mehta-tells-students">Pratap Bhanu Mehta resignation issue</a>. <br/><br/>Let&#8217;s take the issue of &#8216;shrinking liberal space&#8217; in the public discourse and how this is another example of it. All politics is a contestation of narratives. The primary motive is to have your narrative dominate while diminishing the rest. So, from a realist lens, this is what every political party aspires to while few achieve. Therefore to expect any different from any dominant political grouping is to live under a delusion. You might desire a secure and self-assured dispensation that lets a thousand different and often dissenting ideas bloom. But that ideal state of affairs is rare anywhere in the world and in history. India is no stranger to a narrative dominating its body politic for decades. Good or bad is beside the point here. There&#8217;s another narrative in town now and, naturally, it wants to dominate forever. <br/><br/>Questions<br/><br/>That brings us to a couple of questions. Isn&#8217;t good or bad that was conveniently brushed aside above, an important point in this context? If this narrative dominance is what is to be expected, should this b