For the first couple of years, my exposure in startups was mostly within the company : how different departments interact with each other to get things done, and how to interact with external vendors and partners, mostly within what we call the “market,” where people come to trade something.

But during my latest stint at scanO, I got exposure to how a company needs to interact with other players as well – the Sarkaar (the State) and the Samaaj (civil society). My work involved regulatory aspects across different countries, and I got to appreciate how differently countries think about the same issue and regulate accordingly.

Regulation being one of the aspects of policy, of course. For example, why different countries have separate data privacy protocols, or why something qualifies as a medical device in one country and a wellness product in another. That got me curious about the next rabbit hole I’m currently exploring at The Takshashila Institution : Public policy.

To answer my own question, I went deeper into why each country thinks separately about the same thing, which led me to the economics of a nation, the beliefs of a nation, and the general consciousness of the people forming it. Before this, I was one of those criticising the government’s incapability in certain areas as a reaction to everything wrong around us. But diving deeper, I understood why India can’t introduce the same policy as a developed nation like the USA or Europe. Not that people in power shouldn’t be held accountable, but it introduced me to a better way of making sense of the world, through the lens of economics, politics, policy thinking, game theory, systems design etc.

Most importantly, it helped me understand the importance of the “civil society”, and not just focus on the two way interactions between the market and the state. (There is a reason why most of us are trained to think in these limited dimensions, but that is for another essay.)

Over time, this led me to appreciate why citizens should care about how policies are made.

In a way, it’s a power struggle between the State, Market, and Society. Each with different incentives, each responsible for correcting the others’ failures. Depending on how power structures play out, the roles and strength of these three sectors keep changing. I learnt part of this in civics and economics in school, but I understand it far better now, with context from my work experience.

Even with the best intentions, the way the State sees us or you(as an individual) is very different from how we’d like it to see us.

If thinking in terms of the State feels too abstract, think about the company, and you, the employee. There’s a reason your feed is full of memes of employees complaining about employers, and employers complaining about employees. It’s not because either side is evil! It’s a result of power structure, with each side seeing through a different lens and different incentives.

And something that has been an eternal conflict throughout history:

What’s good for the system isn’t always good for the individual. What’s good for the individual isn’t always good for the system. (More on this in the following essays)

If there is something that I would like you to take away from this essay is the mental model that “We are citizens of the society first, not consumers for the markets or subjects of states and kingdoms.”

This thought is a good place to begin for those willing to dive deeper 🙂

As a next read on this topic, you can check out Rohini Nilekani’s article