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He had three promises for his Harvard election campaign: make it easier for students to connect with faculty, simplify course selection and scheduling, and expand library resources. There was no sweeping manifesto or grand political pitch. Yet Pratyush Prabhakar won the student vote to become Vice-President, Academic Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, earning the backing of peers from more than 96 countries across multiple programmes.
Currently pursuing a Masterโs in Public Administration (MPA) at Harvard, Pratyush says the campaign came down to something he considers much harder to fake: authenticity. โI believe being authentic and true to the people and the causes you represent doesnโt take effort, and people can see through if you are not,โ he says.
The student election results were announced on October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, a date that carried unexpected significance for Pratyush, who had cited Mahatma Gandhi as one of his inspirations during the campaign.
He will co-chair the Harvard Kennedy School Academic Affairs Committee with the Dean, representing student concerns on academics, curriculum and advising.
But the election is only one chapter in a journey that has taken Pratyush from Indiaโs Union ministries to public policy entrepreneurship and now to Harvard. Across these experiences, one question has remained central to his work: how can institutions work better for the people they are meant to serve?
Harvard Kennedy School brings together students from a wide range of countries, professional backgrounds and policy interests. For Pratyush, that diversity is not simply a feature of campus life; it also brings a responsibility for student leaders.
โHarvard Kennedy School is one of the most academically diverse and intense campuses in the world. It is also one of the most democratic campuses, with free exchange of all hues of opinions and significant student participation in decision-making,โ he says.
As Vice-President, Academic Affairs, his immediate focus will be ensuring that this diversity is reflected in academic decision-making.
The responsibility, he says, is to ensure that this diversity is reflected in academic decision-making.
That emphasis on participation also reflects his experience in Indiaโs public institutions, where he says the gap between policy and implementation often has less to do with intent and more to do with how systems function.
Before taking admission to Harvard, Pratyush worked across seven Union ministries, including Commerce and Industry, Education, Skill Development, Petroleum, Steel and Railways.
That experience gave him a close view of the challenges involved in translating policy decisions into outcomes.
โDespite the best intentions, many times, the systems are constrained by state capacity and skewed incentive structures, or the lack of it. This creates a major gap between policymaking and implementation,โ he says.
He believes the answer lies partly in making institutions more democratic, decentralised and responsive.
Asked what he would change about Indiaโs public-policy ecosystem, Pratyush points to what he calls the โWhite towel syndromeโ --- a tendency for systems to focus on serving those who are supposed to serve rather than the people they are meant to serve.
โAnyone who has ever interacted with a government office would understand what I am saying,โ he says.
He also argues that policymaking needs stronger links with research and evidence, with decisions driven more by evidence and less by individuals or personalities.
During his Harvard election campaign, Pratyush cited Mahatma Gandhi as one of his inspirations. His connection with Gandhi, however, goes beyond the familiar ideas of non-violence and public service.
For Pratyush, one of the less-discussed aspects of Gandhiโs political life was his ability to turn ideas into action. โOne of the less-visited aspects of Mahatmaโs political life has been that he was great at getting things done. After all, he made the British Raj do things which they did not want,โ he says.
While acknowledging that the context at Harvard is very different, Pratyush believes Gandhiโs ability to persuade, connect and mobilise people remain relevant.
โThe way he could connect with people with so much love and authenticity is remarkable, and worth learning,โ he adds. The fact that the election results came on Gandhi Jayanti was, for Pratyush, an unexpected coincidence.
โOf course, it was such a serendipity. I never thought about this during the entire process, but when it happened, it was like, wow, this is such a pleasant coincidence,โ he says.
Pratyushโs journey to Harvard has also been shaped by his experience of building institutions of his own. He is the founder of Communeeti, a New Delhi-based public policy education venture, and thriWe, a think tank focused on advancing womenโs equity.
While Communeeti works to bring public policy education into the mainstream education system, thriWe focuses on womenโs equity through research and innovation.
The experience has strengthened his belief in Indiaโs younger generation and its potential to drive change.
โThat hope comes from my regular interaction with the younger generation, who not only want a better India, but are also determined to work towards it,โ he says.
That combination of public policy, education and institution-building runs through his academic and professional journey. He is currently pursuing a Masterโs in Public Administration at Harvard Kennedy School as an Edward S. Mason Fellow, a programme for accomplished public leaders from developing countries.
He is a TEDx speaker and an MBA graduate of IIM Calcutta. He holds a BTech in Electronics Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur.
Among the many courses and ideas he has encountered at Harvard, one has particularly challenged Pratyushโs thinking: Professor Ricardo Hausmannโs course, Why Many Countries Are Poor, Volatile, and Unequal.
The course, he says, has โunsettledโ him in a productive way. โThe biggest idea which I learnt is that it is very much possible for a country to fly,โ he says.
By โflyโ, Pratyush means reaching an inflection point at which economic growth becomes sustainably fast. โOther countries have done it, and there is no reason why India canโt,โ he adds.
For him, the path to that transformation is less about dramatic declarations and more about sustained work on areas that may not always attract public attention.
โInstead of convincing ourselves that we are doing great, we need to smell the coffee, and work with a sense of urgency and relentlessness towards that one goal. Everything else is a distraction,โ he says.
He lists increasing patents, greater R&D investment, stronger industry-academia-policy integration, skill development and building institutional know-how among the priorities.
โWe should not be content with mediocrity, and should strive to be at the frontier,โ he adds.
At the same time, he points to Indiaโs digitalisation and financial architecture as examples of what can happen when the country commits resources and attention to building large-scale systems.
With uncertainty surrounding US student visa policies and changing conditions in the American job market, Indian students considering the US face a more complicated decision than simply getting into a university.
Pratyush says his own visa process was smooth, but he saw another problem: appointment availability. โThe application volume in India is too high, and some people, even in my batch, could not join, not because their visa was rejected, but because they could not get an appointment,โ he says.
His advice is to distinguish between coming to the US for education and coming with the expectation of building a long-term career there. "A global exposure on a culturally diverse campus is definitely a great learning experience,โ he says.
But students planning to remain in the US after graduation, he adds, need to research factors including immigration policies and changing job markets before making that decision.
Despite his international academic experience and exposure to global policy institutions, Pratyush says his long-term vision remains closely connected to India. โLife is a series of serendipities, and most of life happens outside your plans. However, that doesnโt mean you should not even have sketchy plans for life,โ he says.
โI definitely have an โIndian dreamโ, and see myself returning to India. Public policy will continue to be my focus and pursuit, inside or outside the government.โ
If he returns, two areas stand out: education and womenโs participation in the workforce and society. โEducation is an area I am deeply passionate about, connected with, and I keep coming back to it,โ he says.
He is equally concerned about the social and psychological barriers that continue to restrict Indian women. โBy holding women back, we are holding ourselves back. I would go to the extent of saying that it is a crime towards our country,โ he says.
For Pratyush, stronger institutions and more progressive policies are central to addressing both challenges.
He invokes Rabindranath Tagoreโs famous lines --- โWhere the mind is free, and the head is held highโ --- to describe the kind of society he hopes India can become.
His advice to students who see institutions like Harvard as beyond their reach is deliberately simple. โI give three advices to anybody who wants to go to a place like Harvard. Those are: apply, apply, and apply,โ he emphasises.
โIt is very natural for most of us to think that our dreams are either too difficult, too distant, or I am not suitable for it,โ Pratyush says. He believes institutions such as Harvard are looking for more than academic credentials. They also value authenticity, drive and a clear sense of purpose.
And his final advice is perhaps the simplest of all: โYou just need to be honest to yourself. Go ahead, and click on the application submit button!โ
Pratyush Prabhakarโs Harvard election victory may have begun as a student campaign, but his new role gives him an opportunity to put into practice the ideas that have shaped his professional journey, making institutions more responsive, strengthening participation and connecting policy with people.
For now, his focus is on representing a diverse student community and helping shape the academic experience at Harvard Kennedy School.
The larger questions that have driven his career, however, remain unchanged: how can institutions work better, how can policy translate into meaningful outcomes, and how can young people play a greater role in shaping that change?
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