Abstract: In a country as large, layered, and fast-changing as India, public policy making rarely follows the neat linear path described in textbooks. This session will unpack the real architecture of policy-making in India: how decisions are actually shaped, who influences them, where ideas originate, how they travel across institutions, and what finally turns them into rules, schemes, or notifications. Through a practitioner’s lens, Mr. Yash Agarwal will take students inside the world behind the formal structures — the ministries, political offices, regulators, think tanks, industry bodies, civil society actors, digital platforms, and informal networks that together shape public decisions. The talk will explore how policy often begins not with grand theory, but with a problem, a conversation, a political signal, a data point, or even a message in the right Whats App group — and how that early idea can gradually move through consultation, negotiation, drafting, iteration, and implementation. It will help students understand not only how policy is made, but how it is contested, refined, delayed, accelerated, and communicated in practice. Equally, the session will focus on careers. For students from engineering, science, research, social sciences, and humanities backgrounds, the talk will offer a grounded view of where they fit in this ecosystem and what policy work actually looks like on a day-to-day basis. From government fellowships and legislative research to think tanks, international organisations, consulting, civic-tech platforms, and advocacy roles, students will leave with a concrete map of entry points into the field. At a time when India’s policy landscape is expanding rapidly across technology, digital governance, climate, urbanisation, trade, education, and public systems, this session will argue that there has rarely been a more exciting moment to enter the space. More than an introduction, it is an invitation to see policy not as a distant domain reserved for specialists, but as a living arena where people from diverse disciplines can learn to read institutions, analyse incentives, and meaningfully shape public outcomes.
Speaker Bio-sketch: Mr. Yash Agarwal is a public policy professional with over seven years of experience in internet governance, technology policy, and stakeholder engagement. He currently serves as Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager at ICANN, working with governments, civil society, and technical communities across South Asia and the Asia-Pacific. He is the founder of Public Policy India (PPI), a leading policy community with over 150,000 members, focused on capacity building, community engagement, and consulting. Yash has also taught as an adjunct or guest faculty at several institutions, including IIT Madras, TISS, Ashoka University, and O.P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he worked with Twitter India and Chase Advisors, and began his career as a LAMP Fellow.