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Bharti Institute of Public Policy is an integral part of Indian School of Business. Bharti Institute has partnered with the world-renowned Fletcher School.

ISB's Bharti Institute of Public Policy leads in education, research & analysis addressing policy challenges in Agriculture, Forest Rights, Data Analytics, Education, Finance & Governance. The institute aims to lead education and research in the domain of public policy. The institute stands tall as one of India’s eminent public policy thinktanks’ engaging with eminent policy makers and providing them with critical, data driven evidence, research and analysis of relevant and critical concerns. The Institute’s flagship program Advanced Management Program in Public Policy (AMPPP) is an inter-disciplinary course that caters to mid-career government and private sector professionals. The institute works on policy challenges across diverse domains, primarily Agriculture & Food, Environment, Education, Finance, Governance and Digital Identity. Vision
To impact public policy by delivering cutting-edge education, research and engagement

Mission:
1. Create top-quality education and research relevant for policy management
2. Train and develop leaders in formulation and execution of policy through world-class programmes
3. Engage with stakeholders to affect public policy

24/09/2026

Turning a new leaf in its partnership with the Government of Meghalaya, the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business (ISB), launched a Certificate Programme in Public Policy for the Fellows of the new cohorts of the Meghalaya District Research Fellows (MDRF) and Meghalaya Legislative Research Fellows (MLRF) 🌐

The foundational workshop for the programme was inaugurated in Shillong in collaboration with the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly Secretariat and the Meghalaya Institute of Governance (MIG), marking a significant step towards strengthening state-level capacity in public policy and legislative research.
The inaugural session established the strategic vision for this capacity-building initiative.

➡️Dr. Aarushi Jain, Director, Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB, set the operational context, emphasizing that the MLRF and MDRF Fellowships contribute to strengthening state capacity in bureaucracy and policy research, while equipping elected representatives to engage effectively with evidence and research.
➡️Dr. Andrew Simons, Adviser (Legislation), Meghalaya Legislative Assembly Secretariat, highlighted how the Fellows have provided invaluable research support to legislators during Assembly sessions by responding to questions and analysing policy issues.
➡️Shri Aiban Swer, Director, Meghalaya Institute of Governance, noted the progressive trust built among legislators, Deputy Commissioners, and Fellows, driven by the quality, responsiveness, and practical relevance of their research support.
➡️Shri R. David H. Kharlukhi, Special Officer & Ex Officio Deputy Secretary, Planning Department, Government of Meghalaya, also graced the session, supporting cross-institutional alignment.

🎯 A major highlight of the workshop was a historic, cross-constituency panel discussion on Leadership and Governance, featuring sitting MLAs Shri Renikton L. Tongkhar (Mawkyrwat), Smti. Miani D. Shira (Ampati), and Smti. Santa Mary Shylla (Sutnga Saipung), alongside Dr. Andrew Simons.

The discussion centred on key themes shaping state leadership:

• Constituency Development: Balancing local priorities with broader state development goals.
• Roles of Legislators: Understanding the responsibilities of MLAs across Treasury and Opposition roles.
• Inclusive Participation: Promoting women's representation and incorporating diverse community perspectives in governance.
• Community Engagement: Building public confidence and fostering community acceptance of development projects.
• Legislative Mechanisms: Effectively utilising Question Hour, committees, and Assembly time.
• Research Support: Leveraging Meghalaya-specific capacity-building initiatives and policy support.
Following the inaugural proceedings, Dr. Aarushi Jain led a Foundational Masterclass on Introduction to Public Policy, introducing the new cohort of Fellows to policy formulation, problem identification, evaluation, and the Policy Cycle.

Through this sustained, multi-stakeholder partnership, BIPP-ISB continues to empower policy professionals and advance data-driven, evidence-based governance across Meghalaya.

23/09/2026

| Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business’s Initiative on the Forest Economy (IoFE) is supporting the Forest Department - Himachal Pradesh in building a real-time database of pastoralists and geo-tagging migratory routes, halting grounds, and watering points across the state.

This data will help the state implement its new Grazing Policy 2026, which uses resilience-based, adaptive, and seasonal metrics to guide grazing allocation. The policy also brings graziers into decision-making through representative committees.

Alongside the policy, the ₹300 crore PEHEL Scheme will extend benefits to more than 40,000 pastoral households through digital identity cards.

Read more here: https://forestgovernance.in/about

22/09/2026

💡 How can life course epidemiology support cardiovascular disease (CVD) research in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs)?

In a review published in AJE Advances: Research in Epidemiology titled "Pathway for life course research in low-income and middle-income countries: Andhra Pradesh Children and Parents Study (APCAPS) 1994–2023," Santhi Bhogadi, Programme Manager – Field Research, Behaviour Change & Policy Engagement, Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business, alongside co-authors present a framework for applying life course epidemiology to evaluate CVD risk factors in resource-poor settings.

The research demonstrates key insights and highlights practical recommendations:

💡 LMICs bear a disproportionate burden of CVDs driven by rapid environmental, behavioral, and metabolic transitions. Life course epidemiology provides an equitable approach to evaluate multi-level exposures across life stages and generations.

💡 Using the APCAPS cohort as a case study, the authors map multi-level determinants of the South Asian "thin-fat" phenotype, which features high body fat relative to BMI and low lean mass.

💡 The study demonstrates solutions for data challenges in LMICs, such as re-purposing household asset data to track physical activity and nutrition environments, leveraging satellite night-time light intensity as an economic proxy, and using Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) to address complex time-dependent confounding.

📖 Read the full research publication here: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajeadv/uuag001

21/09/2026

: Bridging Field Experience and Public Policy through Microstudies in Human Development 🌐

Marking another key state-level engagement under the Platform for Development Research and Communication (PDRC), the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business, in collaboration with Azim Premji University, convened the "Bengaluru Dialogue: The Practice of Policy: Lessons from India’s Development Experience" in Bengaluru.

Opening the session, Dr. Nimisha Jain (Research Manager, Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB) welcomed participants and shared the journey behind the six-volume series, comprising 102 open-access chapters. Moving beyond high-level strategy, the dialogue unpacked the space where policy design meets field reality examining how institutional capability, local context, and citizen experience shape outcomes.

💡 Key Discussions & Technical Sessions

• Prof. Puja Guha (Associate Director, School of Development, Azim Premji University) framed policy as the starting point, emphasising that infrastructural and provisioning gaps must be addressed before meaningful access or utilisation can occur.

• Prof. Amit Basole (Professor, Azim Premji University) highlighted the “plumbing” of policy formulation and implementation, suggesting the microstudy approach be extended to small enterprises to address disparities in credit and subsidy access.

• Dr. Sekhar Bonu (Senior Fellow, NITI Aayog; Visiting Professor, IIT Bombay & IIM Visakhapatnam) focused on public health systems, underscoring frontline institutions like ASHAs, the value of field experimentation before scaling, and concurrent evaluation.

• Mr. Sridhar Rajagopalan (Co-founder, Educational Initiatives) urged a shift in education policy from inputs to foundational learning outcomes, independent assessments, and examination reform.

• Mr. Ved Arya (Founder and former CEO, SRIJAN) emphasised rural livelihoods and women's entrepreneurship, calling for adaptive governance, local capacity building, and market linkages to drive structural economic opportunity.

• Mr. Srikanth Viswanathan (Chief Executive Officer, Janaagraha Organisation) reframed governance by contrasting the government's last mile with the citizen's “first mile,” advocating for stronger place-based urban local bodies.

• Policy Synthesis: Setting context and moderating, Mr. Amarjeet Sinha (Senior Fellow, CSEP) highlighted how the microstudies exercise brought together policymakers, academics, activists, and practitioners through Knowledge Cafés to document experiential knowledge, advocating for adaptive governance that bridges macro evidence with ground realities.

The speakers concluded by emphasizing the need to continuously link field evidence, practice, and theories of change.

Through PDRC, the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB continues to bridge academic research and actionable governance across Indian states.

18/09/2026

: Chennai Dialogue on "The Practice of Policy: Lessons from India’s Development Experience 🌐

Marking another key state-level engagement under the Platform for Development Research and Communication, the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business, in collaboration with the Madras School of Economics and the Madras Institute of Development Studies, convened the dialogue.

Designed to bridge implementation experience with policy research practice, this dialogue focused on translating findings from the six-volumes of Microstudies in Human Development into actionable policy feedback loops.

💡 Key Discussion Points

• Dr. C. Rangarajan (Chairperson, MSE & Former Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) set the framing context, emphasising that policy and field implementation must function as a continuous bidirectional feedback loop to translate spending into real human outcomes.

• Dr. Girija Vaidyanathan (Former Chief Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu) underscored the need to systematically analyse public administration experience, noting that health outcomes rely on whole-system organisation across primary care and frontline workers.

• Dr. T. Sundararaman (Adjunct Faculty, JIPMER International School of Public Health; Consultant, World Health Organization SEARO) stressed life-course nutrition, pointing out that community participation, agency, and women's collectives are vital to effective local interventions.

• Prof. V.R. Muraleedharan (Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras; Head, CTaP, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras) presented micro-evidence on public health sub-centres, demonstrating how primary care infrastructure builds public confidence and reduces out-of-pocket expenses.

Mr. Amarjeet Sinha (Senior Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress) highlighted the role of state capability, decentralised governance, and community action in converting economic growth into human development gains.

• Dr. Sekhar Bonu (Senior Fellow, NITI Aayog; Visiting Professor, IIT Bombay & IIM Visakhapatnam) addressed complex challenges in education, advocating continuous evaluation and tackling "evidence scarcity" amidst "data abundance" through context-aware research.

• Prof. N.R. Bhanumurthy (Director, Madras School of Economics) advocated outcome-based budgeting over simple allocation and called for administrative guidance that adapts to field-level constraints.

• Policy Synthesis, facilitated by Prof. M. Suresh Babu (Director, Madras School of Economics), focused on methodological pluralism, open-access knowledge sharing, and translating growth into human capability.

Dr. Nimisha Jain, Research Manager, (Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB) closed the dialogue by underscoring the importance of evaluating how policies function when implemented in practice. She emphasised that true policy value comes from bridging documented field realities with governance strategies.

17/09/2026

| What happens when a poverty program stops treating people as beneficiaries and starts treating them as partners? The National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) offers key lessons:

🌱 Scaled across 742 districts, reaching 100M+ women via 9.16M
Self Help Groups

🌱 Built women-led community institutions from Self Help Groups to federations

🌱 Shifted the fundamental approach to poverty reduction in India

However, sustainable impact requires moving beyond conventional relief:

🔹 Households in NRLM villages achieved a 22% higher net income.

🔹 Longer exposure led to 19% higher incomes and 28% higher savings.

🔹 Proves local knowledge and strong institutions matter as much as funding.

Poverty reduction works differently when communities are not just recipients, but its architects.

💡 Chapter "The National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM): Key Lessons for Policymaking," explores these insights in Pathways to Rural Prosperity: Livelihood Interventions and Transformation in India, edited by Ved Arya, Ayushii Balutia, Ashwini Chhatre, and Nivedita Narain, published under the Platform for Development Research & Communication (PDRC) at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB.

Author Nita Kejrewal unpacks over a decade of NRLM implementation and outlines scalable, community-centred models for sustainable rural livelihoods.

📖 Read the full volume here: https://www.routledge.com/Pathways-to-Rural-Prosperity-Livelihood-Interventions-and-Transformation-in-India/Arya-Balutia-Chhatre-Narain/p/book/9781041221340

16/09/2026

| nCount has now powered the collection of over 5 lakh data points across seven states in India. Developed by Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business’s Initiative on the Forest Economy (IoFE), nCount is our open-source AI and computer-vision platform for forest resource inventory.

The platform enables forest-dependent communities, students, researchers, and civil-society volunteers to capture geo-tagged field observations using their phones.

The 5 lakh+ data points span forest resource inventory, above-ground biomass estimation, GNSS analysis, government programme monitoring, and IoFE research projects. From focused field surveys to large-scale forms capturing text, images, video, and audio, nCount has supported diverse data collection needs, processing over 1 lakh data points in a single day at its peak.

Read more: ncount.in
forestgovernance.in

15/09/2026

💡 How do urban consumers in India perceive their food environments, and how does it drive their daily purchasing choices?

In a cross-sectional study published in Nutrition & Food Science titled "Assessing consumer-perceived urban food environment domains: a cross-sectional study of accessibility, affordability and convenience across selected urban sites in 11 Indian states," Dinesh Balam, Head, Food Systems, AI, and Regenerative Agriculture, Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business, alongside co-authors evaluate how consumer perceptions of accessibility, affordability, and convenience shape household food purchasing behaviors across urban sites in 11 Indian states.

The research demonstrates key insights and highlights practical findings across 1,117 surveyed households:

💡 Local markets serve as the primary reported food source, while e-commerce utilisation increases with higher household income and education levels.
💡 Purchasing patterns vary across income groups low-income households purchase more snacks and sweets, whereas high-income households report higher frequencies of purchasing fast foods and beverages.
💡 Essential items like pulses, nuts, edible oils, fruits, and meats are widely perceived as expensive, with households expressing a clear preference for higher-quality and more varied foods under hypothetical income increases.
💡 Staples including atta, rice, pulses, and milk are rated as most convenient, with overall perceived convenience driven primarily by physical accessibility, storage, and preparation effort.

📖 Read the full research publication here: https://www.emerald.com/nfs/article-abstract/doi/10.1108/NFS-02-2026-0043/1392684/Assessing-consumer-perceived-urban-food

11/09/2026

| Rainfed agriculture covers 51% of India’s net cultivated area, yet it delivers 40–45% of the country’s total food production:

🌱 Supports millions of rural livelihoods dependent on farming

🌱 Produces 83% of nutri-cereals, 81% of pulses, and 72% of oilseeds

🌱 Sustains the majority of India's small and marginal farmers

However, the sector faces growing vulnerabilities:

🔹 Experts have identified 168 districts as high-priority, vulnerable rainfed regions.

🔹 Severe land degradation, soil erosion, and climate extremes hit these rainfed areas hardest.

🔹 Historical investments heavily favoured irrigated regions, leaving rainfed farming ecologically fragile.

Restoring these landscapes is not just about water; it is about ecological balance, community resilience, and climate justice.

💡 Chapter "Land Restoration and Management in Rainfed India: Lessons from NABARD's 30+ Years' Experience," explores these insights in Changing Tides: Climate Action and Justice in India (1st Edition), edited by Anjal Prakash and Marcella D'Souza, published under the Platform for Development Research & Communication (PDRC) at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business.

Authors C. S. R. Murthy, R. Ravi Babu, Chetna Nahata, Pallavi, and Marcella D'Souza unpack over three decades of watershed development programmes and outline scalable, community-centred models for sustainable land management.

📖 Read the full volume here: https://www.routledge.com/Changing-Tides-Climate-Action-and-Justice-in-India/Prakash-DSouza/p/book/9781003660255

10/09/2026

Season 4 Episode 10 is here! 🚀

What does it really take for a woman to navigate systemic gender dynamics and drive impactful policy at the highest levels of government?

This episode of Bharti Institute’s Policy Talks explores public service, women's leadership, and policy ex*****on through the inspiring journey of a senior civil servant.

In this episode, "Public Service in Practice: Women, Leadership, and Policy Ex*****on," Dr. Aarushi Jain, Director, Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB, sits down with Ms. Rakhee Gupta Bhandari, IAS, Principal Secretary, Government of Punjab.

➡️ Ms. Rakhee Gupta Bhandari reflects on her early career experiences as a new entrant into the civil service and navigating systemic gender dynamics.
➡️ She discusses the evolving role of female officers in public administration and the importance of representation in policy ex*****on.
➡️ She shares valuable insights for the youth and aspiring civil servants who look forward to making a meaningful contribution to public service across the country.

Tune in to gain deep perspectives on public service, women's leadership in governance, and policy implementation at the ground level.

📺 Watch the full episode now: https://youtu.be/sbvWgpgkVwk

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