My best friend worked in Vidhi before going abroad. Here's what he said:
NEGATIVES:
- He merely wrote speeches for ministers, prepared PPTs for bureaucrats, wrote newspaper articles for senior Vidhi staff and organised conferences. Genuine policy research (if done) is usually disregarded, as our bureaucrats are resistant to outside experts and our ministers are uneducated people who can barely read.
- Vidhi sucks up to whoever is in power. Earlier close to Veerappa Moily and Salman Khurshid, then Jaitley and RS Prasad, now whoever. The next Vidhi talk is by Bibek Debroy, a hardcore Modi supporter, on "decolonising" the Constitution or something like that (pet theme of J Sai Deepak and RW brigade). So that tells you what you need to know. You will always see articles by Vidhi in news articles blandly stating facts and rarely criticising the government.
POSITIVES:
- Vidhi has "access", as ministers/bureaucrats are thankful to them for helping them out with speeches and PPTs (usually for free). This "access" leads to a lot of funding.
- This funding, in turn, leads to a good salary for junior staff. So a good career option for those who don't want to work in law firms.
- Good work hours and nice superiors. The organisation is run by NLU grads and grads of foreign universities, so they are a lot more understanding, progressive and modern than Lala law firm owners (who are just slavedrivers).
- Good place to work in if you want to get a scholarship abroad.
so you are hinting that criticism of the ruling party is the only way of publication? Please tell me how any law firm digest is anyway criticising the govt? They analyse facts and people pay to read? Basic academic publication. Perhaps, critiquing the govt would yield more profits from 1. opposition 2. backhanded payments from the rulers to shut up. I know quite a few who are guilty of the same, mainstream journalists so to say.
As for your weird 90s India assumptions "bureaucrats are resistant to outside experts and our ministers are uneducated people who can barely read." would request you to check the qualifications of our ministers and lateral secretaries in the government. `Also perhaps the kind of "public policy" work CAM does.
Thirdly your conclusions based on "NLU" leadership is quite misleading. These NLUs have crowded several senior partners at the "Lala law firms" who disprove your point vehemently.
As for funding, I literally dont see you criticising foreign funding of the "non ruling" parties. the FEMA violations etc.
I can't comment about Vidhi, but in general there are billions being poured into think tanks and universities all over the world by corporates: lobbying in the guise of research. The worst offenders are the big tech companies, which promotes sexy concepts like "free speech", "copyleft", "open internet" etc to cover up for their failings in checking hate speech, copyright piracy, privacy violations etc. Just google it (ironically) and see how Google does this kind of funding. In India, infrastructure companies do such lobbying by getting papers published which call for limited government oversight.
Again, this is not a comment on Vidhi and I know very little about them. It's just a comment on corporate funding.
hahaha you people just cant help but seethe the moment the moment you see something that doesnt align 100% with your exact specific views and isnt constantly peddling the same old agenda. cope.
Vidhi think tank and its leanings are discussed here every couple of weeks while hundreds of others aren’t because their leanings are in perfect line with the demographics of this site. My advice, stop cribbing about the one exists for the other side and start contributing to yours if you’re so worried.
Do they do professional lobbying behind the think tank name? What's thier influence in lawmaking in India?
Any other secrets (open) or new is welcome.
NEGATIVES:
- He merely wrote speeches for ministers, prepared PPTs for bureaucrats, wrote newspaper articles for senior Vidhi staff and organised conferences. Genuine policy research (if done) is usually disregarded, as our bureaucrats are resistant to outside experts and our ministers are uneducated people who can barely read.
- Vidhi sucks up to whoever is in power. Earlier close to Veerappa Moily and Salman Khurshid, then Jaitley and RS Prasad, now whoever. The next Vidhi talk is by Bibek Debroy, a hardcore Modi supporter, on "decolonising" the Constitution or something like that (pet theme of J Sai Deepak and RW brigade). So that tells you what you need to know. You will always see articles by Vidhi in news articles blandly stating facts and rarely criticising the government.
POSITIVES:
- Vidhi has "access", as ministers/bureaucrats are thankful to them for helping them out with speeches and PPTs (usually for free). This "access" leads to a lot of funding.
- This funding, in turn, leads to a good salary for junior staff. So a good career option for those who don't want to work in law firms.
- Good work hours and nice superiors. The organisation is run by NLU grads and grads of foreign universities, so they are a lot more understanding, progressive and modern than Lala law firm owners (who are just slavedrivers).
- Good place to work in if you want to get a scholarship abroad.
As for your weird 90s India assumptions "bureaucrats are resistant to outside experts and our ministers are uneducated people who can barely read." would request you to check the qualifications of our ministers and lateral secretaries in the government. `Also perhaps the kind of "public policy" work CAM does.
Thirdly your conclusions based on "NLU" leadership is quite misleading. These NLUs have crowded several senior partners at the "Lala law firms" who disprove your point vehemently.
As for funding, I literally dont see you criticising foreign funding of the "non ruling" parties. the FEMA violations etc.
Again, this is not a comment on Vidhi and I know very little about them. It's just a comment on corporate funding.
The latest Briefing Book which has been mentioned in comments is here and once again, you're free to draw your own conclusions.