An economist with over five decades of experience. An activist who has rallied citizens to raise their voices to shape their city. A technologist interested in how cities treat people with different abilities. A teenager who loves buses and bus rides. A designer curious about diverse people create together. A journalist who is keen to demystify data on public transport. Last year, on a warm June afternoon, all of them, and many others from different disciplinary backgrounds came together to discuss and debate about how to make public transport more equitable.

The event 'All Aboard' organized by Fields of View with our partners had some distinct characteristics. To start with, the event was about bringing results of five years of research on public transport to policymaking. The research was interdisciplinary, it drew from social sciences, technology, and design. Our research was presented in different forms, including research papers, comic books, and posters. Participants who presented their research and insights were from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, all interested in transportation. And, the participants engaged with FoV's tools, including a game and a simulation for transport planning, that made the research actionable for the government.

When we started eight years ago, we dreamt of creating such spaces for academic researchers, civil society activists, people working in the government and industry to have an informed dialogue to address social problems. We wanted tools stemming from interdisciplinary policy research to be used by different actors. We wondered whether such a space would be possible. Now we know, the answer to that question is yes.

We now know how to create such spaces, where and how these tools can be used, where such dialogues fail, and what needs to be done to push for more dialogue. And we have evidence to back our claims.

For the seventh consecutive year, FoV has been featured in the 'Best New Idea or Paradigm developed by a Think Tank'; category of the 'Global Go To Think Tank Index Report'; created by the University of Pennsylvania ranking think tank organisations worldwide. We have also been featured in the list of 'Top Think Tanks in China, India, Japan, and the Republic of Korea'.

In the past eight years, we have witnessed the language around policy slowly change. Back then (yes, we feel we are old enough to claim that phrase), even the term 'wicked problem' was not something folks spoke of in policy circles, let alone thinking of tools to address wicked problems. Now, we have organizations knocking on our door asking us, hey, we are working on such problems too, shall we build a something together? We are happy to have helped shape this space in our own way.

We have seen our tools, developed for the Indian context, being used in Europe, seeking new ways to cope with diversity. In government offices, instead of kind and puzzled faces greeting us when we spoke of games and simulations, our conversations are markedly different. Instead of talking about the 'one solution that will save us all', we speak of trade-offs and consequences of different policy 'options'. After all, in a plural, democratic society like ours, there is no one right way to a better future, rather we need to have a dialogue about what does 'better' mean.


- The FoV team