The Policy-Making Process in India: From Formulation to Execution

Every scheme or law that shapes our daily lives – from MGNREGA to the Goods and Services Tax – travels a long, often messy road before it arrives. Behind each announcement lies a web of decisions involving the Cabinet, the Prime Minister’s Office, bureaucrats, courts, political parties, and even protesters on the street. Understanding how policies are actually made helps us see why some schemes succeed spectacularly and others stumble at the last mile. Let’s walk through the policy-making process step by step and see who really pulls the levers.

What do we mean by policy-making? 🔗

Policy-making is the structured exercise through which the government identifies a public problem, designs a response, gets it approved, puts it into action, and then checks whether it worked. It is rarely a straight line. Most scholars describe it as a cycle with six broad stages – agenda setting, policy formulation, adoption, implementation, evaluation, and policy maintenance. Each stage pulls in different actors, different pressures, and different technical requirements.

The constitutional anchor for this process comes from Article 77 of the Constitution, under which the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1961 and the Allocation of Business Rules, 1961 lay down how business is disposed of and which cases require approval of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, or the President. These rules form the skeleton on which the entire policy-making machinery operates.

The stages of the policy cycle 🔗

Agenda setting 🔗

Before anything becomes a policy, it must first become a priority. Agenda setting is the stage where a problem demands government attention. This can happen through public protests, electoral manifestos, a crisis, an international commitment, or persistent media coverage. Not every issue makes the cut – leaders decide which problems are urgent enough to tackle given political, budgetary, and timing constraints.

The Swachh Bharat Mission, for instance, emerged once sanitation was reframed from a peripheral concern into a public health and dignity issue worthy of national attention. Similarly, the anti-corruption movement of 2011 pushed the Lokpal into the legislative spotlight, showing how sustained public pressure can force an item onto the agenda.

Policy formulation 🔗

Once an issue is on the agenda, the hard work of designing a response begins. Draft proposals are prepared, expert committees examine options, data is collected, and international comparisons are studied. The secretary assists the minister in formulating public policies and is the highest policy official in the field concerned, with Policy Planning Units set up in key departments and ministries to support this work. This is also the stage where technical rigour meets political judgement – a well-designed policy that is politically unsellable rarely survives.

Policy adoption or legitimation 🔗

A proposal becomes official only when it is legitimised by those empowered to make binding decisions. For most major policies, this means Cabinet approval followed by Parliament’s sanction through legislation. Parliament is the supreme public policy-making body in India because the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister depends upon the support of a parliamentary majority to remain in force. Parliament enacts laws, sanctions budgets, and legitimises the policy decisions taken by the executive. In practice, however, most policy content is prepared within the executive, while Parliament debates, amends, and finally endorses it.

The rollout of the Goods and Services Tax is a textbook example of this stage at work – it required constitutional amendments, fresh legislation, and the creation of a GST Council as a permanent decision-making body.

Implementation 🔗

This is where policies either deliver or fall apart. Implementation involves creating administrative structures, allocating budgets, deploying personnel, writing guidelines, and coordinating action across multiple ministries and levels of government. Policy implementation requires a wide variety of actions, and the implementation of policy is not the end of policy-making but a continuation of policy-making by other means. In other words, street-level bureaucrats and field officers continue to make consequential choices as they adapt a central scheme to local realities.

The Digital India initiative illustrates the scale of the coordination challenge, requiring alignment across ministries, state governments, and private partners before its technological objectives can reach citizens.

Evaluation and maintenance 🔗

Once a policy is running, it needs to be measured against its objectives. Evaluation happens through monitoring systems, impact studies, social audits, and citizen feedback. NITI Aayog has become a central node for such assessments, with its evaluations of flagship schemes feeding back into design changes. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme, for example, has seen modifications like fortified foods and enhanced monitoring after successive evaluations.

Policies are often revised, extended, or terminated based on what evaluation reveals. This is why the policy cycle is iterative – learning from one round feeds the next.

The institutional architecture of policy-making 🔗

The Cabinet and the Prime Minister 🔗

The Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister, sits at the apex of executive decision-making. Major proposals – whether a new law, a tax reform, or a defence agreement – require its approval. Because the Cabinet as a whole cannot examine every technical detail, much of the groundwork happens in Cabinet Committees such as the Cabinet Committee on Security and the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which bring focused expertise and inter-ministerial coordination to specific policy domains.

The Prime Minister is not merely first among equals. Over time, the Prime Minister’s Office has grown into a powerful centre of policy influence. During Indira Gandhi’s Prime Ministership from 1966 to 1977, the Prime Minister’s Secretariat not only swelled in size but also in power and authority, virtually becoming a national policy formulation body. That trajectory has broadly continued, with the PMO today operating as a strategic hub for agenda-setting and coordination.

The Cabinet Secretariat 🔗

The Cabinet Secretariat is the administrative engine that keeps this machine running. It functions directly under the Prime Minister and is headed by the Cabinet Secretary, who is also the ex-officio Chairman of the Civil Services Board. Its role is less about making policy and more about enabling policy: convening Cabinet meetings, circulating agenda papers, recording decisions, and ensuring that these decisions translate into action across ministries.

Importantly, the Cabinet Secretariat also brokers consensus. The Secretariat assists in decision-making by ensuring inter-ministerial coordination, ironing out differences among ministries and departments, and evolving consensus through standing and ad hoc Committees of Secretaries – and through this mechanism, new policy initiatives are also promoted. In a federal system with overlapping jurisdictions, this coordination function is indispensable.

The ministries and the secretariat system 🔗

Below the Cabinet, ministries and departments do the detailed drafting, costing, and rule-making. Each ministry is headed by a minister who provides political direction and a secretary who leads the administrative side. The secretary, as the senior-most bureaucrat in the ministry, is central to formulating policy options, vetting proposals from below, and ensuring that final decisions get implemented on the ground.

Parliament 🔗

Parliament’s formal role is supreme, but its practical role is nuanced. In reality, Parliament does not determine policies except in a formal sense – it influences public policies through general discussions and debates, while most legislation is prepared within the executive. Parliamentary standing committees, question hour, and debates still provide critical opportunities for scrutiny, which can reshape policy substance.

The judiciary 🔗

Courts have become increasingly influential in policy-making, especially through the mechanism of judicial review and public interest litigation. The judiciary can strike down policies that violate the Constitution, direct governments to frame policies on neglected issues, and monitor the implementation of its own orders. Landmark interventions on environmental protection, the right to food, and the right to education show how judicial activism has expanded the courts’ footprint in the policy process.

Non-governmental actors and informal influences 🔗

Political parties 🔗

Political parties are the vehicles through which policy preferences are aggregated and translated into electoral mandates. Their manifestos often anticipate future policy directions, and the ruling party’s ideological orientation sets the tone for what kinds of problems are prioritised. Opposition parties, in turn, shape policy by forcing debate, proposing amendments, and mobilising public opinion.

Pressure groups and civil society 🔗

Pressure groups – organised associations pursuing specific interests – are crucial informal inputs into the policy process. They influence policy-making and policy implementation through legal and legitimate methods like lobbying, correspondence, publicity, petitioning, public debating, and maintaining contacts with legislators. Business associations like FICCI and CII are regularly consulted during pre-budget meetings, trade unions shape labour policy, and farmer organisations have historically influenced agricultural policy – most recently visible in the rollback of the three farm laws after sustained protest.

Civil society organisations and NGOs also serve as watchdogs, data providers, and amplifiers of marginalised voices. Many civil society organisations act as pressure groups on the government to promote implementation of policies in their areas of concern, and they educate people, widen their vision, enhance democratic participation, and raise and articulate various issues.

The media 🔗

The media plays a double role in the policy process. First, it sets the agenda by spotlighting issues – investigative stories on farmer distress or pollution can push a problem onto the government’s radar. Second, it acts as a watchdog during implementation, exposing failures and forcing course corrections. With the rise of digital platforms, social media has added a new layer, allowing citizens and smaller groups to mobilise opinion rapidly and at low cost.

Experts, think tanks, and international influences 🔗

Think tanks, research institutes, and expert communities bring technical depth to policy formulation. Bodies like the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, and university-based policy centres contribute analyses that feed into ministry deliberations. International commitments under bodies like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, or the Paris Agreement also shape domestic policy choices, from climate action to digital regulation.

Why the process is messier than the textbook version 🔗

While the stage model is useful, the real process rarely moves neatly from one step to the next. The policy-making process is iterative, with many players involved, leading to a policy determined by various interests and options. Stages often overlap – implementation can begin before formulation is complete, and evaluation can reshape policies even as they roll out. India’s COVID-19 response was a dramatic example: problem identification, formulation, adoption, and implementation unfolded almost simultaneously, with continuous course corrections.

Several structural challenges also weigh on the process. Capacity constraints at the local level, coordination difficulties across India’s federal structure, and one-size-fits-all designs that struggle with regional diversity all create a persistent gap between policy intent and ground-level delivery. Addressing this implementation gap remains one of the central tasks of Indian governance.

Emerging trends shaping policy-making 🔗

A few shifts are reshaping how policies get made today. Evidence-based policy-making is becoming more common, with greater reliance on administrative data, evaluations, and pilot studies. Cooperative federalism – institutionalised through NITI Aayog and GST Council-style bodies – is changing how the Centre and states co-produce policies. Digital platforms have expanded consultation, with draft bills and rules routinely opened to public comments online. And citizen participation, whether through social audits, Right to Information queries, or online petitions, is slowly moving from the margins toward the mainstream.

What do you think? Which stage of the policy-making process do you believe is the weakest link in India today, and why? Can greater involvement of pressure groups and civil society make policies more responsive without slowing down decision-making?

References

1. https://www.ispp.org.in/the-formulation-and-development-of-public-policies-in-india/
2. https://cabsec.gov.in/aboutus/functions/
3. https://www.igntu.ac.in/eContent/IGNTU-eContent-344137278034-MA-PoliticalScience-4-Dr.GeorgeT.Haokip-Paper401PublicPolicyandDevelopmentinIndia-Unit1.pdf
4. https://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/76653/1/Unit-3.pdf
5. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/19094/1/Unit-8.pdf
6. https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/Paper2/pressure-groups
7. https://blog.lukmaanias.com/2025/05/03/pressure-groups/