The last two decades have witnessed a shift in paradigm of governance and a perceptible endeavour towards reorienting, reinventing and restructuring of public administration in India This had become necessary in the wake of popular disenchantment with the pace of development and quality and level of service provided to citizens The three areas highlighted in the article, also in focus currently in governance are, responsive administration accountable civil service and a commitment to the principles of Constitution . The cost of having a dysfunctional political and administrative system have made imperative that a radical restructuring of the system of governance is done at the earliest The article suggests some core areas where urgent attention is required.
DISILLUSIONMENT AND disappointment in many fields of governance notwithstanding Indian experience in public administration in the last five decades has undeniably been a unique and unparalleled historical phenomenon of global dimension. India is a country of continental magnitude and a nation of civilisational proportions. It has a historical backdrop of twenty-five centuries with an experience of a wide variety of systems of governance, which includes ancient system of statecraft devised by Kautilya and Manu, Muslims and Moghul systems. and British colonial administration on the one hand, and experience of government by the people” since Independence on the other. Insofar as the last five decades are concerned, it can be safely stated that nowhere else, and no other time in human history have so many agenda for governance been experimented in such a limited span of time,
Since the inception of Constitution, public administration in India has transformed and transmuted itself to face the task of building up a democratic set up of governance for securing to its citizens, justice-social democratic economic and political. Preserving the unity and integrity of a multi-racial. Multi-lingual and multi-religious nation was the other most daunting task his unique process, public administration in India has grappled with wide array of interventionist responses. Planning, public sector expansion, panchayati raj, infrastructure development in agriculture and irrigation and cooperative movement have been the important policy initiatives in the 1950s, whereas land reforms, industrialisation, green revolution came to focus in the 1960s, Direct attack on poverty, economic stability have been the priority areas in the 1970s E-Governance, liberalisation, globalisation, and privatisation of economy, empowerment of the people, creation of space for decision-making for women by reserving one-third seats in Panchayati Raj institutions, transparency, accountability and responsiveness in governance through enforcement of the right to information have been the new areas of concern in the last two decades. The country has passed through severe vicissitudes including four major wars and has dealt with terrorism, insurgency and separatism in many parts. Yet the nation has peacefully conducted 13 general elections, and the administrative set-up has responded to the various stresses by activating and adapting itself conceptually, structurally and functionally Governance in a democratic set-up involves mechanism, structures, processes. institutions and action-oriented philosophy, through which people aggregate assimilate and articulate their varied interests and opinions, exercise their legal rights, fulfil their obligations and mediate their differences in a non-coercive manner. The characteristics of good governance include rule of law. participation, distributive justice, consensus orientation, transparency, responsiveness, equity and inclusiveness economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and above all accountability. People are the source of all power in a democracy and the structures created for governance are, ‘in theory’ the agency of the people to carry out some defined tasks. The fundamental law of good governance is that to each unit of power given by the people to the government, there must be commensurate accountability to the people .
When the nation became independent, a conscious decision was taken continue with the administrative structure inherited from the colonial rule, despite the fact that the Constitution of India articulated the will and aspirations of a liberated nation, which were fundamentally opposite to the basic paradigm of colonial rule. Governance at the time of Independence had to face five basic challenge of democratization second was the challenge of development – orientation, third was the challenge of decentralisation and fourth was challenge of institutionalisation and the fifth was the challenge of the “revolution of rising expectations”. The literature in public administration in the first two decades after Independence was replete with writings on reorientation of the colonial administrative set up to meet these new challenges. The findings of the scholars ranged from skepticism on the one hand to cautious optimism on the other. The issues of neutrality in commitment of civil servants, the role of generalists and specialists public administration, relationship between civil service and political leadership the ability of civil servants to face up to the new issues of development in of role behaviour and performance , etc., occupied the attention of the scholars during this period
In the last two decades, there has been not only a perceptible shift in the paradigm of governance but there has also been a new search for reorienting, restructuring and reinventing of public administrative institutions. In sharp contrast to the earlier concerns about reforming the governance, it has recently been recognised that governance is not confined to government alone. Government has been seen as a condition of ordered rule and administration as a means to promote organisation rather than direction or coercion Instead of trying to bring about marginal and incremental reforms without tampering with the basic structure and ethos of traditional governance, recent concerns in public administration have sharply focused on the need to bring about a radical restructuring of the m of governance. This was the result of the frustration of the masses with the pace of development and the quality and level of service provided to the people.
Almost all nations, including the developed nations have felt the need for such radical action. The American initiative in 1993, hailed as Gore Initiative, titled ‘From Red tape to Results: Creating a Government that works Better and Costs Less’ with a view to reduce the “trust deficit” has influenced to some extent the official thinking around the world, including India. This has resulted in a spate of debate on a shift in the understanding of human capacity and new role of information technology in transforming administration. The task of administration has been seen to uncover the untapped potential of the people by developing a clear vision and shared sense of mission. The criticism of the Gore’s recommendations even through 384 in number are not ‘new’. His main criticism is that Gore’s basic approach is wrong, What is needed is neither ‘patching’, nor ‘downsizing’. Amputation before diagnosis, he has warned, is as wrong in management as in surgery The megastate, he concludes, that this century built is bankrupt morally as well as financially. This does not however mean that governments should withdraw from all activities. What is needed is effective government. Another important critical view has come from Henry Mintzberg in 1995, who has identified four types of organisation in governance,
(i) Private owned organizations, (ii) publicly owned or sule owned organisations. (ii) cooperalively owned and (iv) the non-owned organizations, frequenuy refemed to as non-govemment organisations (NGOs) and also the non business organisations such as universiues,hospitals, chanty organizations. activist organisations, etc.In response lo Gore’s official announcemeni lhal the American people are their customers, Mintzberge says thal the people are not lo be seen only as customers. People relate with govemancc under four hats (0 Customci (il Clienls (iii Ciuizen (iv) Subject While government offers professional services, such as education health, social sccurity, which puts people in the role of clicnus, they also provide people in their role of citizens services such as economic policy infrastrucure facility, social sccunry,etc. To be righls of people as citizens correspond their obligalion as subjects, such as of tax payments and respecting govemment regulalions. Customers are appropriately served by privalely-owned organisations However, when it comes lo citizen and subject acuvities, one should not suuy beyond the state ownership model except with a greal deal of prudence. The trade-offs among competing and conflicting interes in citizen activities and the necessary use of authority in subjecu activiues mandate a clear role for the stale. The Don-owned organisauons have their relevance for the client relationship in govcmance. Honest Lip service or Genuine Posr mortem luis interesung lo note that in An Agenda for ecuve and Responsive Administration brought out by the Govemment of India in a conference of chief secretaries of all the states and union tenritories, the uuree main areas of concem were enlisted as: ensuring administrative accountability (ii) eliminating comuption in the civil service from within, and (ii) makin