Workshop Organised by PAC
Workshop on Policy Advocacy Date: June 24-26, 2014
Venue: Bangalore
Shrimoyee Bhattacharya, Senior Researcher from CSTEP attended a workshop, organised at Public Affairs Centre (PAC) Bangalore under the Policy Engagement and Communication programme.The workshop was delivered by Ms. Aditi Kapoor, with participation from PAC researchers.
There is increasing recognition towards the role of Think Tanks in policy making world-wide. However, the research findings by Think Tanks often fall short of making the right policy impact due to communication failure. In this context, the main objective of the workshop was to facilitate and train researchers in the following key aspects: a) Who to communicate with amongst policy makers; b) How and where to strategically place CSTEPs research for maximum impact; c)Policy briefs as one of the communication outputs and how to write one; d)Discussion with some policy makers in Bangalore. With CSTEP being one of the important Think Tanks in the Indian policy making domain, it is important for CSTEP researchers to be able to identify and overcome the communication bottlenecks research organisations and Think Tanks face in transforming research work into actionable policy guidance briefs. Along with useful and brief lectures by Ms. Kapoor, the workshop included interactive and hands-on sessions and group activities such as reviewing a policy brief, writing a policy brief for one of PACs existing works, making a presentation, etc. The last day of the workshop involved direct role playing with one of the senior bureaucrats in Karnataka. The 3rd day ended with making an advocacy strategy for the policy brief. The workshop provided strategic guidance towards the options available for communicating evidence-based research with policy makers in the best possible way.
