# Essay 2
# Developmental policies in action - a poli-fi exercise

In the previous piece, I had suggested undertaking mini mental exercises on Fictional Policy, or “poli-fi” - a framework for institutionalizing change for social good. In this piece, I will undertake a poli-fi exercise with a social problem, and come up with a naive, ideal policy to implement its solution. So let’s begin.

Although there are well-intended policies addressing societal issues, there seems to be a lot of debate, mostly politically charged, on the possible outcomes. But what seems to be, rather conveniently, skipped is the enforcement and monitoring of the implementation of the policies instituted at both the national and international levels. This is an age-old issue that has largely been left unsolved to this day. And although “implementation” can come in various forms in different walks of life (public, corporate, private), allow me to define a part of what it can look like in a University setting, a sphere that generally aims to build in its students knowledge, skills, and values for the future. This general aim should be embedded with developmental policies.

Hence, this will serve as the basis of our new policy’s aim: To orient students with the awareness, sensitize them to the importance, and equip them with the know-how and framework of adopting developmental policies as part of their everyday academic learning, co-curriculars, and extra-curriculars in order to be well-founded with the fundamentals in implementing and achieving results of developmental policies at larger scales in their societies and firms. In order to oversee the implementation of this policy, there will be a dean-selected (annually), professor-mentored, student-run Council for Development (CfD), composed of 12-15 members (inclusive of final, pre-final, UG, and PG students), with the primary selection parameters being deep/altruistic passion, knowledge, and demonstrated history or actionable interaction with the field of development policy.

On creation of the council, and in consultation with all stakeholders, one development policy will be chosen as the Theme of the (academic) Year (ToY), such as the UN SDGs or G20. Now, coming to the agendas of the policy that the CfD will implement:

1. Spread ToY awareness at the start via a) mandatory seminars (at least 2), b) permanent artwork/posters spread across the campus, and c) any other medium as deemed fit.

2. Ensure each campus activity has at least a 25% quota partial or full ToY “alignment”. Examples: i) A literary club organizes a writing competition (like on Independence Day), with 1 out of the 4 prompts being ToY-aligned, so as to encourage literary thinking of the same. ii) An engineering department allots 10 out of the 40 different Final Year projects to develop ToY-aligned engineering solutions, so as to build practical implementation-oriented acumen to be used in their future career.

3. Build daily/regular activities for all those on-campus in line with the ToY (such as reducing carbon footprint by reducing energy consumption in conjunction with clean energy).

4. Organize an annual University-wide, ToY event with workshops, seminars, competitions (be it in the arts or the sciences), etc. to further inculcate a deep-rooted, actionable sense for the ToY’s problems and solutions.

Having said that, please note that the proposed University CfD policy and its agendas are a subset of the larger model of implementation. Societal communities, firms, schools, government departments, etc. are all environments where such similar policies can be tailor-made to mobilize nationwide, on-ground action toward developmental policies. Additionally, this University CfD policy is to be abstracted further to include inter-institute, inter-state, and national-level events and competitions to further boost dialogue on the implementation of such development policies. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next." With this policy, I aim to build acumen in the youth to later implement social and corporate developmental solutions towards actionable, achievable, and higher levels of nation-building.

I hope the above example provides a view into how a poli-fi exercise can be possibly undertaken. As can be clearly seen, it does require policy experts to get on the bandwagon and convert the idealism into a bit more practicality for implementation. But as mentioned in the earlier piece, such poli-fi exercises serve as the founding step that leads to healthy, solution-oriented discussions of societal problems - which could have been long gone.