A first of its kind, the India Public Policy Report (IPPR) is the flagship publication of JSGP which seeks to contribute to policy advocacy and to improving the policy making and the implementation process in India. The Report will also help in mainstreaming the teaching and practice of public policy in the country. It is proposed to be published biennially.

More specifically, the objective of IPPR is to anticipate and highlight issues that have a bearing on the development prospects of the country in the short to medium-term and help inform and influence the process of policy formulation. It aims to strengthen evidence-based policy making anchored in normative principles. The Report will focus on institutional and capacity constraints and best practices that have been seen to be successful in translating policies into desired social outcomes under different circumstances. It also seeks to evolve a credible methodology for periodic assessment and analysis of the preferred public policy options, with a view to improving the effectiveness of policy advocacy and its implementation in the country.

The targeted audience of the Report includes the policy making machinery in the country at the central and the state level, including the legislature and the executive (line ministries), the civil society, academic community and the media, which is expected to support informed debates on issues of topical policy relevance.

Over time, an effort would be made to link the results presented in the Report with the governmental policy making processes at the central and the state-level both for the short (annual plans and budgets) and medium-term (five year plans). This could be ensured by addressing topical themes of policy interest in the Report and through active participation in the consultations organised by public agencies at the national and sub-national level. The thematic focus for the first issue of this report, to be tentatively released in August 2013, will be ‘Poverty, Hunger and Malnutrition’.