The *Yes Minister* and *Yes Prime Minister* series by Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn are incomparable in terms of the wealth of learnings for public policy for how bureaucracies in colonial and post-colonial countries and perhaps elsewhere function in explaining relationships between elected representatives and bureaucrats in organisational behaviour and wider organisational sciences and of course in satirical comedy. I watched Yes Minister somewhere in the early 90s when I was in my high school and was fascinated by how the series visualised the inner workings of government. Of course, at the time I probably did not have an idea of how much this could apply for India because all the time I remember thinking that this is how the British government probably worked. Over the years after having studied organisational sciences and various theories of organisational behaviour for my PhD work which sought to examine how leadership and management skills manifest within government local health systems, I have become fascinated with the several teaching potential and several parallels between current meso-level functioning of public health and public policy and government organisations in India and the several situations portrayed in Yes Minister and Prime Minister series. So, here is a compendium of short sequences that can be used to illustrate specific public policy situations which are drawn from these series. The effort of course is really to make these teachings and learnings more easy to understand but also to sometimes use comic and satire in public health and public policy teaching.
**Teaching snippets**
1. The "patientless hospital" from the episode *The Compassionate Society* (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyf97LAjjcY)
2.
Previous efforts
1. Use of YM/YPM to teach *Public choice theory* by John Considine in Wiley/IEA's *Economic affairs* ([Link](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2006.00650.x?utm_source=researchgate.net&utm_medium=article))
2. Some interesting cokmparative perspectives between Canadian/British conservatism and their appraoches to public choice theory as "self-interested utility-maximizing rational choice to explain the behaviour of voters, politicians and bureaucrats" by Sandford Borins (1988) in anotehr Wiley journal *Canadian Public Administration* ([link](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1754-7121.1988.tb02139.x))
3. This book possibly has parallels - to be explored. Written by former Indian bureaucrats. *In service of the republic* by Kelkar & Shah (2022) ([link](https://www.penguin.co.in/book/in-service-of-the-republic/))
4. An online PDF of YM here ([linik](https://facultyweb.kennesaw.edu/uzimmerm/docs/Yes%20Minister.pdf))
5. Wikipedia's [List of YM & YPM episodes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yes_Minister_and_Yes,_Prime_Minister_episodes#ep8)
Notes
1. Currently, on can see innumerable curated bits of videos on Youtube (below) or if you have subscription to BBC (within Amazon Prime?)
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Last updated: 2026-01-11 13:29