#131 Learn From Others. It's Free 🎧

<em>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.</em><br/><br/><em>Audio narration by </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>.  </em><br/><br/><strong>India Policy Watch: Road Ahead  </strong><br/><br/><em>Insights on burning policy issues in India</em><br/><br/>- <em>RSJ</em><br/><br/>What’s next for the Indian economy? Here’s a quick 8-point view on where things are at today.<br/><br/>Clearly, the speed of vaccination will be the single biggest driver of how quickly the economy recovers this year. The daily vaccine rate has inched up to over 3 million a day after a poor May. While this isn’t adequate, there’s greater intent in procuring and debottlenecking the vaccine delivery process that’s evident. India has only vaccinated about 50 million with both the doses as we write this. It will need tremendous effort to get this number to over 600 million before December but it looks in the realm of possibility. That number will get us close to herd immunity. There’s a skew in vaccinations rates with the top 20 cities getting disproportionate supply of them. Considering these are economic hubs and drivers of consumption, this is acceptable for some time. But this skew has to reduce and the vaccines must reach the rest of India soon to reduce the probability of a third wave. There’s a danger of lapsing into complacency on speed of vaccination seeing the reduction in cases and resumption of economic activities in the big cities. We cannot afford it. <br/><br/>The rural economy has taken a hit in the second wave going by the case count and deaths. The rural demand had held up during Wave 1 last year but it was already tapering before the start of Wave 2. The <a target="_blank" href="https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/nbfc/high-auto-debit-bounce-rate-in-may-show-rising-nbfc-