Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan has decided to follow in the footsteps of Prime Minister Narendra Modi by seeking suggestions on policies that are being drafted and holding long brainstorming sessions.
The Minister has put up a box outside his office to elicit suggestions from his staff, and there is speculation that the brainstorming will be taken out of the confines of the Ministry to outdoors.
The PMO had recently invited ideas from people on what shape the new institution to replace the Planning Commission can take, and before the Lok Sabha elections, Mr. Modi had sought suggestions from people for the BJP’s manifesto.
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The Ministry will also seek suggestions from the public after a separate team sifts through the proposals made by the officials. “It is a serious exercise; all the suggestions will be filtered and examined for plausible implementation. Initially, it will only be open to staffers, but eventually people’s suggestions will also be sought on framing policies that affect them,” said a Ministry official.
For the past few days, the Minister has also been chairing prolonged brainstorming sessions with the staff and the stakeholders, a practice that he had followed when he was a Minister in the Delhi government.