Pranay Kotasthane

Deputy Director, Takshashila Institution | Co-host, Puliyabaazi podcast | Author

About: Pranay Kotasthane is the Deputy Director at the Takshashila Institution and currently chairs Takshashila's high-tech geopolitics programme. He teaches public policy, international relations, and public finance at the institute's graduate and postgraduate programmes. He is an alumnus of the fifth cohort of Takshashila’s Graduate Course in Public Policy and recipient of the Gomtibai Govindji Award. Pranay co-hosts the highly popular podcast Puliyabazi and co-writes regularly on his substack Anticipating the Unexpected.

BOOK

Name: Missing In Action: Why You Should Care About Public Policy

Description:

In India, public policies are all around us. Despite this pervasiveness, yeh public sab nahin jaanti hai (the public doesn't know it all).

Questions are rarely asked of the Indian State-the institution that makes rules, bends them and punishes others for breaking the laws it creates. The privileged can afford not to think about the State because we have given up on it. The not-so-privileged have resigned themselves to a State that provides short-term benefits.

Either way, we seldom pause to reflect on why the Indian State works the way it does.

Missing in Action aims to change such perceptions through sketches from everyday experiences to illustrate India's tryst with public policymaking. It acquaints the reader with some fundamental concepts of the public policy discipline. It explains the logic (or the lack of it!) of the Indian State's actions, shortcomings, constraints, and workings.