Book review: Rumki Basu, Democracy and Public Policy in the Post-Covid-19 World: Choices and Outcomes
| Author | V. Srinivas |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00195561211040152 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews 501
This volume will definitely share its space at the desk and shelves of academi-
cians, researchers, and professionals who are working, or planning to work, on the
issues of disaster management, and we are hoping to receive many more volumes
in the same series.
Rahila Sikandar
Lawyer, High Court of Judicature at Allahabad
rahila.sikandar1@gmail.com
Rumki Basu, Democracy and Public Policy in the Post-Covid-19 World:
Choices and Outcomes. Routledge, 2021, 217 pp., `3,029.69 (eBook).
DOI: 10.1177/00195561211040152
Rumki Basu, Professor of Public Administration and the former Head of
the Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, has presented an
anthology of articles on the likely impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on future
policymaking in India and other democracies. She has critically looked at the
available theoretical frameworks, models and approaches used in the policymaking
process and studied their contemporary relevance. Further, she has examined
India’s policies on education, health, e-Governance and gender and work and
provided recommendations for the future.
Rumki Basu is eminently qualied for undertaking this work having published
twelve books and forty articles on issues of public policy and governance,
international organisations and the political economy of development in India.
She has presented several papers at the World Congress of Political Science over
the past three decades and was conferred a research fellowship by the Indian
Council of Social Science. Professor Rumki Basu happens to be a pre-eminent
scholar in Public Administration in India today, widely respected for her thoughts
on public administration and public policy.
The research for the book was undertaken in 2020 in the backdrop of the
Covid-19 pandemic. The book has fourteen chapters which examine the normative
and the empirical frameworks. Section I looks at the empirical framework having
six chapters, and Section II has eight chapters that examine the normative impact
of some of the sectoral policies.
Professor Rumki Basu introduces the subject of Covid-19 pandemic as a once-
in-a-century crisis event where the whole world is sailing in the same boat in
ghting the challenges emanating from this. It is a period when strengths and the
fragilities of the governance capacity systems have been severely tested,
necessitating an imperative rethink on the public policies of the State. In India, the
government faced the challenge of saving lives and then saving livelihoods.. The
dependence of the public on the State capacity which is heavy even in normal
times became more onerous in the crisis situation that India had never faced
before. She presents the view that benets of good governance can be best brought
about in democracies where a notion of good governance denes citizen
entitlements. One major lesson the Covid-19 crisis has brought forth is that in the
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