‘I, expert’

OVER the past 27 years of my academic life, post PhD, I have been asked by many different government departments, ministries, and bodies to be on numerous boards and committees. I have been asked to be an adviser and have also been on many taskforces and expert panels, and requested to speak on a countless number of panels. However, other than a handful of experiences, most of them did not have any impact on anything to the best of my knowledge. This, of course, might be a reflection on me, but I think there are more systemic issues that need to be looked into as well.

When people from the private sector are asked to be on the board of a public sector company, commission, or body, they are usually a minority on the board; the majority is usually composed of government bureaucrats. The private members are generally added to show broader stakeholder engagement and engagement with experts, but it is not really meant to have much of an impact on governance or other matters.

So, with regard to most of the boards that I have been a part of, there have been two to three meetings a year. Each meeting has lasted a couple of hours, and, more often than not, routine matters have taken up most of the time at the meeting. If a significant issue has been put before the board, usually the majority of government members already knew what they wanted so the matter was taken up just for approval and usually not for discussion. Seldom has substantial input been asked for from the ‘experts’.

I have been a part of many taskforces and expert panels as well. Some taskforces and/ or expert panels are brought together to conduct policy-relevant research and to give one’s input through written output. I have been involved in such groups in the areas of industrial policy, export policy, trade policy, and growth strategy. In each of these cases, it took a lot of effort, six months or more of work, to do the background work and research and have consultations in order to put the report together. In each case, the report was eventually presented to the minister concerned or other relevant authorities. In all of these cases, the reports were lauded for their ‘excellent’ input. But all of the reports were then shelved. And if anything was incorporated in the policies, it must have been by default and not by design.

Where the taskforce or expert panel is not asked for written input, the experience becomes even more ephemeral. Taskforce and panel meetings, if they happen, tend to be a lot of talk and do not contain much substance. It is just a place where people try to impress one another and/ or outdo each other. Not much happens in the end. Eventually, most such taskforces and/ or panels simply fade out.

Currently, I am part of the prime minister’s taskforce on education emergency. The emergency was announced in May 2024. The first meeting of the taskforce was called and postponed/ cancelled three to four times before it was finally held. Even then, it was not the prime minister who chaired it; he asked the planning minister to chair it. Nothing got done at the meeting. And since then, we have not had another meeting. This is not untypical of what happens with many taskforces and/ or committees.

Then there was a time — this was quite a few years ago — when a federal secretary had called me and expressed his desire to meet. When I met him, he pointed to a pile of papers and said, here are all the relevant documents, we have two weeks, can you write the trade policy for this year? I was flabbergasted, to say the least. I told him two weeks seemed a very short time. He said it was all we had. This had been done in a similar manner in the past too. I told him that I worked on industry issues mostly and was not a trade economist. He asked: “Are you an economist or not?” I am glad I was able to wriggle out of that one!

There is a lot of rhetoric about data-driven decision-making and the need for evidence-based policymaking. There is also always talk about involving the stakeholders in policymaking and getting inputs from experts. But the reality is that the processes through which this is done — in the form of committees, expert panels, taskforces, board memberships, and even some consulting work — are either not effective or not effectively used. They do not create ownership on any side. The experts seldom have an incentive to put in the hard work needed for deeper research. Even if some do want to put in the work, there is hardly ever any demand or expectation of such work from the other side. The bureaucrats might feel that experts do not know or appreciate the ground realities and so their inputs are too theoretical or distant. So, not much is given and not much is expected. It leads to a nice and cosy equilibrium but a low-level one.

Why do I, and others, keep engaging? I can only speak for myself. It keeps me connected to policymaking; it gives me some insights into issues that are being grappled with; there have been some instances, though rare, where good work was asked for and it got done as well, and there is always hope, when I am asked to join a group, that it will be one of those rare experiences. But in general, looking back over the last 27-odd years, there is not much to toot about. Maybe this entire engagement model needs to be looked at more deeply.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2025