From Mahatma Gandhiji’s powerful adage “The Earth has enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s endorsement, “Jai Anusandan” the potential of planning to achieve progressive development of our society is apparent, preparing us to make social decisions in harmony with Nature. However, in the present era, we realise that, like all other systems, the workings of the human system will become futile without good administration. To build powerful administration and institutions, ‘Public policy-making' has emerged as a powerful method to address societal challenges and to meet the goals of sustainability. Public policy making is intricately connected to diverse themes related to human society and policy-makers are in great demand to guide the routes for building a strong society.  

The Department of Public Policy (DPP) has been established as a unique educational node within Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) Bengaluru campus, to promote graduates of any discipline to pursue MA in Public policy with a vision to metamorphose into policy-makers par excellence. The programme encourages and supports them to bring together knowledge, experiences and learnings from their own fields to inform evidence-based policy-making for the benefit of the society. Unbiased interest and passion in understanding multiple dimensions of human existence, development and progress, such as : why policies can be effective tools for social decision-making, how inter-connected are the processes of governance and economic development with the environment, and how do policies impact society etc., will be advantageous to the make a unique career out of the courses in public policy, offered at DPP as per the visions of the NEP 2020. 

With the advantage of its open-ended, modular-learning curriculum and efficient pedagogical framework, MAHE, an Institution of Eminence, and ranked among the top ten Universities in India (current NIRF Rank#7), offers students unparalleled opportunity to explore the art, science, and technique of policy-making across the domains of their personal as well as professional interests. The curricula of the 4-year BA course and a 2-year MA course is designed to provide opportunities to students to not only learn about policy-making in the classroom but also undergo experiential learning as interns with practitioners themselves. Practical learning will be in the form of a 2-month internship, giving them industrial connect and networking opportunities. Collaborations with domain experts from diverse fields from the Industrial and Government sectors, Academia and research institutions, as well as the Non-governmental Organizations, will be part of the course to bring a trans-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary outlook to the course, through exposures to lectures in selected topics of interest, as well as through policy dialogues with different disciplinary teams. 

As we celebrate the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, DPP is excited to offer new-age programmes to students who will carry forward the torch of policy-making for building ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ and a progressive nation from the auspices of MAHE Bengaluru.