#124 Flailing Again 🎧

Programming Note: We are taking a short break. Back on May 2. Stay safe.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>Audio narration by&#160;<a href="https://www.ad-auris.com/">Ad-Auris</a>. &#160;<br/><br/>PolicyWTF:&#160;Winging the Pandemic<br/><br/>This section looks at egregious public policies. Policies that make you go: WTF, Did that really happen?<br/><br/>- RSJ<br/><br/>One of the things we often say around here is how difficult it is to craft public policy. The process requires diligence in collating evidence, intellectual integrity in comparing the options and trade-offs, anticipating the unintended, planning for implementation, mapping the stakeholders and communicating to all of them. You know the drill. <br/><br/>Importantly, a lot of these decisions have to be taken when the future is unknown and there&#8217;s uncertainty all around. Your assumptions could be off the mark or unforeseen events could derail your plans. You cannot do much when you are dealing with &#8216;unknown-unknowns&#8217;. You have to opt for the best policy course while dealing with the &#8216;epistemological fog&#8217;.<br/><br/>This is one of the reasons why we don&#8217;t do a post-mortem of a policy decision with the benefit of hindsight. We call out a policyWTF the moment we think we have spotted one. And then go back to it as the future unfolds in line with what we had anticipated or differently. <br/><br/>But if I do have to analyse a policy response of the past, I follow what I refer to as the &#8216;retrospective case study&#8217; method. It is a simple tool dealing with only the &#8216;knowns&#8217; and I will use it to analyse India&#8217;s Covid-19 response. As India deals with a second wave with its healthcare infrastructure struggling to keep pace, the question that everyone is asking is how did we ge