The Development Policy and Practice Conference 2025 brought together academics, lawmakers, and practitioners to talk about the most important problems of our time. The world is still trying to figure out how to deal with issues like inequality, social justice, and development. The meeting, which took place at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS) in Hyderabad, India, gave people a chance to talk about important issues and work together to make policies that would help with problems in government, economic inclusion, and social justice. The main idea of the meeting was "Sharing, Development, People, and the Question of Redistribution." The next panels and discussions looked at how tax policies, climate change, healthcare, education, and legal changes all affect each other. This gave everyone a chance to see development and fairness from a wide range of angles. In this blog post, we'll talk about the most important things we learnt from the conference, including the most important problems and possible answers that came up during the discussions.

Dr Revathy, kicked off the Development Policy and Practice Conference by saying this: "Irrespective of the regime in power, the people's agenda should be on the top This is why these conferences on public policy matter."

The Digital Divide: A Roadblock to Progress

The opening session set the tone for the conference by talking about the pros and cons of digital inclusion and how it affects development policy in a larger sense. The speakers stressed how important it is for everyone to have equal access to digital infrastructure so that everyone can join and take part in the digital economy. "The promise of digital equality will not come true without fair digital infrastructure," said Osama Manzar, founder and director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF). Laveesh Bhandari agreed with this and said that it was important to help the informal sector, which isn't always taken into account when policy is being talked about.
Taxation and redistribution: A Way to Make Growth More Inclusive

The first panel, "Navigating the Tax System, Devolution, and Cooperative Federalism," talked about the background and complexities of taxation in India. It also talked about how important it is to have a fair and complete tax system that helps both economic growth and social well-being. Using the Nordic model as an example, Jeemol Unni said that economic growth and successful public taxation can lead to development that benefits everyone. But, as Subhomoy Bhattacharjee pointed out, India's tax systems aren't always the same. To understand progressivity in taxation, you need to look at how well the system can handle it.
The need for openness and responsibility in regulation and government

The second group, "Regulation in India to Move Towards Excellence," looked at the regulatory environment in India. It stressed how important strong regulation is for promoting economic growth and protecting public interests. Laveesh Bhandari said that one of the main problems with India's regulation system is that people don't follow it. Madan Kumar K P said that one of the main problems is that regulatory groups don't work together, which causes problems and slowdowns.
Global Forces at Work in Trade, Geopolitics, and Climate Change

As part of the third topic, "Trade, Geopolitics, and Climate Change," experts talked about how trade, geopolitics, and climate change affect India's growth. Debashis Chakraborty disagreed with the common story about changes in US trade policy, saying that the current changes are not a big departure from how things have always been done in the US. Ovais Sarmad talked about the effects of leaving the Paris Accords and emphasised how important it is for India to use its key location to change global trade and climate policies.
Health care and education are the building blocks of a fair society.

The fourth and fifth groups, "Education: Bridging Digital and Social Divides" and "India's Healthcare: Access and Equity," discussed the problems and chances in healthcare and education, respectively. The people who spoke stressed how technology affects access to and quality of education and how laws are needed to fix these problems. The speakers discussed how healthcare needs to be delivered in new and different ways, such as through public-private partnerships and digital health projects. They also stressed how important it is to deal with the social determinants of health.
Law, Economics, and Society: Making Sure Fairness and Justice

India's law and justice system has problems, with the sixth panel, "Law, Economics & Society: Ensuring Justice," focusing on issues like injustice, access to justice, and the need for change. The speakers emphasised the need for major changes to the law to fix systemic problems and protect individual freedom. They also talked about how important it is for the courts to be accountable and open.
Concluding with Future Directions for policy and research-
In the closing session, the main points of the conference were summed up and future study and policy development priorities were set. The speakers stressed how important it was to work together and come up with new ideas to solve the problems that were being talked about at the meeting. The panel also pointed out that that more study needs to be done on how migration affects education, and she stressed how important it is to focus on secondary education. The conference ended with a call to action, asking policymakers, academics, and practitioners to work together to make society more fair, where everyone can benefit from growth that lasts and is fair. We believe the conference has discussed some of the most pertinent questions of our time, looked at them critically and sought suggestions work together to make policy and also work on the research needed for future policy framing. These include the need for fair access to digital infrastructure, a complete and fair tax system, strong rules, new ways of providing healthcare, and major changes to the law.

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A more detailed, session-wise report will be made available soon in both CDPP and DEF websites. We look forward to sharing it and getting everyone's feedback!

DEF Updates

We are happy to announce that DEF partnered with The govt. of Telangana, T-Hub, WE-Hub, and T-Works to successfully host the 2025 WSA Global Congress in Hyderabad. We will return soon with a detailed report from the Summit!

See you, Next Week.