CCS Alumni organizes Public Policy Workshop for Journalists in Patna
26 journalists representing 19 media house in Patna participated in one day Public Policy Workshop for Journalists on 21 August 2010 in Patna. Pioneered by the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), this new initiative started in 2009 in partnership with Friedrich Naumann Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF) with an objective to provide journalists with a better understanding of public policy, its formulation and evaluation of its impact on citizens thereby enabling them to better report on important social, political and economic issues.
Mr Swayam Prakash, Resident Editor, Prabhat Khabar (Patna Edition), alumni of CPPJ 2009 was the local coordinator for the workshop.
The workshop was designed keeping in mind the key objectives of introducing/popularising liberal solutions to existing problems in India with a focus on public policy and equipping journalists with the necessary tools to critically analyse issues. Based on the basic model of the standard three day residential certificate course, three key sessions were repeated from last year’s course, while a new session on MNREGA was introduced this year. All the sessions were participatory in methodology and included a brief overview and input by session speakers followed by working groups and open forum discussions.
The introductory session on the ‘10 Principles of Sound Public Policy’ with input from Dr Parth J Shah, President, CCS was followed by working groups wherein the participants were divided into four groups. The task for each group was to evaluate these principles, add, alter or remove as deemed necessary after discussion with their group members and to come up with a revised set of principles. The presentations by group leaders were very engaging and thought provoking.
The second session on ‘Economic Freedom for the Poor’ started with a presentation by Mr Arbind Singh, Executive Director, Nidan which highlighted their work to facilitate empowerment of the poor and marginalized sections through appropriate community based and pro-poor participative interventions. He focused on the nature and scope of informal sector, problems and the way forward and demonstrated through his rich experience as to why it is important to bring economic freedom to poor by citing the example of street vendors. He emphasized that illegality and lack of identity are forcing street vendors to live in a state of forced poverty.
The third session on ‘Impact & Challenges of MNREGA’ saw speaker Nawal Kishore Chaudhari, HOD Economics, Patna University highlight the challenges in the implementation of the scheme and the relation between poverty and access to property and employment. “MNREGA is the first government program giving right to employment to poor and should be seen more from the human rights perspective as a welfare program giving minimum basic livelihood to poor and less from economic perspective,” said Mr. Chaudhari. He suggested expanding the limit of 100 days employment to round the year, and reach from only rural poor to urban poor.
The fourth session ‘Sound Policy Index’, jointly facilitated by Dr Parth J Shah and Ms Manali Shah was a deeper reflection and discussion on an array of issues plaguing India today. Styled in the form of an open discussion following a series of questionnaires, the session was very reflective of the degree of liberal bend of each participant.
The final session of the workshop saw a presentation on India’s first liberal portal in Hindi, www.azadi.me.
The workshop ended with an address by Mr Pratyaya Amrit, Secretary Road Construction Department, Govt. of Bihar and certificate distribution to all participants. In his brief address Mr Amrit talked about the relationship between journalism with social responsibility. He said, “It is important to understand the long term impact of news to report better. Reporting should help common people understand the functioning of their governments as well as help the administration and management function better.”
Speaker's Presentations
Media Coverage
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