Local governments still have a long way to go for ensuring a pro-people and deliberative democracy with strong priority towards recognizing the voice of citizens and their meaningful empowerment.

The Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach of alleviating poverty. The key to their experimental approach was randomized trials to test the effectiveness of social programs and interventions. Such evidence driven approach, if executed with sound research ethics, overcomes individual biases, haphazard decision making, and counterproductive political agenda. Public policy guided by evidence has its utility in understanding social problems, designing the interventions that can be more targeted, nimble, and experimental, and making a track of the progress of such interventions. On top of that, the evidence-based approach also brings about transparency and accountability in the policy decision of the government.