(MIT-World Peace University (MIT–DPU) recently gave me an opportunity to speak at a session during its annual initiative, the Bharat Chhatra Sansad.
Here is a brief excerpt from that speech)

Good morning all.

Hon Dr. Kuchekar, respected members of the faculty, and my young friends—

I was told that I may speak on a topic of your choice. That is both a privilege and a risk. I can speak on almost anything—except spirituality, about which I claim no authority. But after thirty-four years in government service, one inevitably becomes a jack of many trades, though perhaps master of none. And a jack, at least, must be prepared to speak.

So tell me—what would you like to hear? Shall I choose? Shall we speak of public policy? Of pharmacy? Of regulation? Or shall we speak of something larger—your place in this Republic?

Let us begin with public policy. That, after all, is what your Chhatra Sansad is meant to reflect. And before I proceed, let me invite you—no, challenge you—to ask questions. Sharp questions. Inconvenient questions. I am not your professor or examiner. I hold no grudges. And even if I did, what could I possibly do to you? So be fearless.

Now, here is my first question to you.

In seventy-six years of this Republic, can you name a single instance in which a public policy was conceived by students or young people, adopted by government, and implemented nationally?

Just one example.

If youth is not involved in shaping policy, then what exactly are we discussing? If there is no structural participation, then all this becomes rhetoric—sound without substance, chaff without grain.

If you truly wish to be stakeholders in this Republic—not merely voters, not merely beneficiaries, but architects—then the first question is this: How do you insert yourselves into the design of public policy?

For seventy-six years, you have largely remained outside that chamber.

Collectively, you must ask: How do we become integral to policy formulation? Not as spectators. Not as applause. But as force.

Before we design policies, however, we must confront a more uncomfortable question:

Do we even understand the problems we seek to solve through the policy formulations?

Public policy exists for one fundamental reason—to address a problem. No problem, no policy. But tell me: are we aware of the top ten problems facing this country? Not in abstraction. Not in slogans. In order of urgency. In clarity.

Let us forget ten. Tell me the top three.

One. Two. Three.

Are we certain?

I say this with all sincerity: we are a problem-illiterate nation.

In government. In politics. In bureaucracy. And yes, even among the youth.

Problem-illiteracy is our first crisis.

When I asked, on social media, for the ten most pressing problems of the country, the answers were scattered, emotional, fragmented. After days, I concluded: we do not know our problems in structural terms.

Unless we identify them precisely, policies will remain ornamental. Elegant on paper. Hollow in effect.

You speak of unemployment. Of pollution. Of population. Yes, these matter. But are we analysing them structurally? Are we quantifying? Are we ranking? Are we forecasting what will emerge in the next decade?

Without clarity, there can be no good policy.

You must begin there.

Let me move to something more foundational. Humanity itself was shaped by policy decisions. Seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens migrated out of East Africa. That was a collective decision—born of scarcity, perhaps led by youth. Migration was policy. Settlement was policy. Agriculture was policy.

The Indus Valley civilisation, nine thousand years ago, demonstrated urban planning, water management, and social organisation of extraordinary sophistication. Roads aligned. Drainage systems engineered. Civic design executed. That was policy in action.

In 1950, we gave ourselves a Constitution. That was policy enshrined in law.

And yet today, youth remain peripheral to policy design.

This Chhatra Sansad must not become ritual. It must become rehearsal for power.

Let us examine an example.

In 1972, Maharashtra faced a devastating famine. Crops failed. Water vanished. People starved. The government could have distributed cash. Instead, an Employment Guarantee Scheme was conceptualised: give people work; build assets; conserve water; strengthen infrastructure. People earned. Villages endured. Roads were built. Soil was conserved.

That is policy responding to crisis with structural intelligence and simultaneously build rural infrastructure that is productive!

Contrast that with schemes that is the current Ladaki Bhain Scheme just to distribute money without structural correction. Was this scheme conceptualised on the demand from women of the state? Were there agitations for this scheme?   Ask yourselves: does it solve the underlying problem? Or does it postpone reckoning while deepening fiscal strain?

You must learn to distinguish between populism and policy.

Now let us speak of economic superpower.

Before 1750, India accounted for roughly 24% of global GDP—comparable to the United States today. We were a leading economic civilisation when agriculture and artisanal industry dominated the world economy.

If you wish to become an economic superpower again, what does that mean?

Is it merely GDP size? Or is it per capita income? Or is it equitable distribution?

Here is the real structural problem: sectoral disparity.

Roughly 60% of our population depends on agriculture. Yet agriculture contributes only around 17% of GDP. Meanwhile, 40% of the population—engaged in industry and services—commands the remaining 83%.

This imbalance is a structural fault line.

If policy does not address sectoral inequality, economic superpower status will remain cosmetic.

Now let me turn to pharmacy—your field.

We have the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940 and the Rules of 1945. It is, in many respects, among the most robust regulatory frameworks in the world. Amendments, from time to time, including latest amendment to Schedule M(WHO Good Manufacturing Practices) have aligned it with the statutory framework across the globe.

The law is strong.

Implementation, however, is the test.

When I became Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in Maharashtra in 2011, I discovered that for decades, a vast proportion of the law had not been meaningfully implemented. Provisions existed in statute. But practice was selective.

And whom was the law meant to protect?

Manufacturers? Traders? Regulators?

No.

The patient.

Yet the patient was absent from the regulatory ecosystem.

Consider three facts:

First, an overwhelming proportion of medicines—especially antibiotics—were sold without prescription.

Second, pharmacists were often absent, their licenses rented for nominal sums.

Third, generic prescribing was undermined by brand promotion, inflating cost and complicating pharmacovigilance.

The consequence? 

Antimicrobial resistance. 

Adverse drug reactions. 

Circulation of counterfeit medicines.

Policy without enforcement becomes decoration.

I cancelled hundreds of circulars that diluted statutory provisions. I insisted that the law be implemented as written. What was the reaction?

Strikes followed. 

Pressure followed. 

My transfers was attempted.

But I persisted in the post for a full term of three years with my own trick of the trade, instead of becoming victim and hero officer by donning the crown of “most frequently transferred honest officer”!

But regulation is not an ornament. It is a shield.

Let me narrate one case.

In 2011, complaints emerged regarding a hip implant manufactured by a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, DePuy —ASR hip joints. Patients reported excruciating pain. International regulators had raised concerns. Some countries had withdrawn approval.

Yet in India, thousands had been allowed to be imported and  implanted in spite of the adverse atmosphere against this product internationally. 

When I investigated, I found evidence that the implant could release cobalt and chromium into the adjoining tissues. 

Serious harm. 

Severe complications.

The company resisted recall. Pressure was exerted—from corporate channels, from political quarters, from bureaucratic hierarchies.

We filed a criminal FIR.

It was unprecedented. A state regulator initiating criminal proceedings against a global pharmaceutical giant.

The matter escalated. There was turbulence. Eventually, compensation mechanisms began to take shape for affected patients.

The lesson is simple: law must serve the citizen, not the corporation.

Now I return to you.

The world is entering an era beyond conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing—gene editing, CRISPR technologies, AI-driven molecule discovery, personalised medicine, preventive biotechnology. Some futurists even speculate that by mid-century, mortality may become increasingly postponable through radical life-extension technologies.

Whether exaggerated or not, the trajectory is clear: the future will not resemble the present.

If India merely imitates, we will always trail. If we innovate, we lead.

Policy must be future-oriented. Youth must be future-literate.

Do not be satisfied with ritual assemblies. Do not accept fiscal populism without structural reform. Do not celebrate GDP without questioning distribution. Do not revere law without demanding implementation.

This Republic belongs to you. The debts incurred today will be repaid by your taxes. The technologies emerging now will define your professions. The policies drafted in closed rooms will govern your freedoms.

So the real question is not what I should speak.

The real question is: when will you begin to speak—systematically, collectively, structurally—into the making of policy?

Ask. Analyse. Identify. Propose. Persist.

Otherwise, history will continue to be written without you.

Now, I invite your questions.

-Mahesh Zagade