State Of Policy In India, 2026 Report, Crows As Clean-up Crew, And Participatory Budgets
Policy Post #245
Dear fellow policy enthusiasts,
The Policy Post this week brings to you
Reimagining City Budgets Through Citizen Participation
State Of Policy In India, 2026 Report
Crows used to pick up litter - a cost-cutting drive
As always, we wrap up with a curated list of opportunities.
If you want regular access to similar updates and opportunities in your city and local policy ecosystem, you can join our City Chapters: here!
Reading time: 3 minutes. Let’s get into it!
⁉️PPI’s Policy or Parody?
💬Policy Charcha - one thing to learn this week
Municipal budgets, collectively handle between ₹1.5 and ₹1.8 lakh crore annually.
This essay discusses how municipal budgets are perhaps the most neglected documents in Indian democracy.
👀What caught our eye
We can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts but we can’t teach people not to throw them on the ground.
New Caledonian crows, a member of the corvid family of birds, are as good at reasoning as a human seven-year-old. The Corvid Cleaning Company has now recruited these crows to pick up discarded cigarette butts from the streets and squares of a Swedish city as part of a cost-cutting drive.
🏙️State Of Policy In India, 2026 Report
What does it actually take to build a career in Indian policy right now? Nobody’s put that on record yet.
We’re building the first honest record of what it’s actually like to work in Indian policy, the entry points nobody warns you about, the pay nobody talks about, why you’re still here or thinking about leaving.
Your answers become ‘State of Policy in India’ 2026, STRIDE’s first flagship report.
10 minutes. Fully anonymous. Due July 25, 2026.
Everyone who responds gets a curated, exclusive list of career opportunities and resources from PPI, sent to your inbox.
Beyond that:
🟣 10 respondents get 1 on 1 chat on all things policy and careers with our Founder, Yash Agarwal
🟣 3 respondents get invited to the launch event with travel/stay covered by PPI
🟣 The most insightful respondent gets invited to join PPI for a paid, remote, fixed term fellowship role
🟣 PPI merch for some of the best respondents
And so much more!!!
⚡The Catalyst Corner
In Partnership With Swasti, The Health Catalyst
Unless we address how the health system is experienced, a life of well-being may remain a distant dream for the marginalised. This is the foundational understanding behind Swasti’s flagship program, Invest4Wellness (i4We), as well as, their incubation of the CPHC Alliance.
i4We is a system innovation in primary healthcare. It combines health and wealth interventions, and focuses on well-being for the poor and marginalised communities. It is intentionally designed to be affordable, quality-assured, and scalable.
It is currently delivered in four settings: urban, rural, factories, and sex workers’ collectives, and is adapted to each of these contexts.
💼Careers Corner: 50+ new listings this week
A curated list of some of the best jobs and internship opportunities this week from the world of public policy, the development sector, impact consulting and communications at large.
📩 Best bit - if you know of a job/internship opening that’s not listed here, kindly just add that as a comment on the sheet: giving 20,000+ people immediate access to it!
⁉️Policy or Parody?
Thank you for taking the time to the read The Policy Post this week. If you find what we do at PPI to be of value, please spread the word.
You can also check out our City Chapters: here where we share career opportunities, events happening, and other policy-related information.
See you next week with more opportunities! :)