Major Concerns with regard to Administrative Reforms (to be continued)

"Administrative Reforms" are nothing but the artificial inducement of administrative transformation against resistance. They pave the way for a new order and refer to the formal, mechanistic and meditated process of structured change. Like F. Riggs mentioned, administrative reform is 'a problem of dynamic balancing'.

Some of the major concerns of administrative reforms in India are:

1. Efficiency and Economy:

Both these aspects come from the time the Management Sciences evolved during F.W. Taylor's age. Even Fayol and Weber had stressed on their importance in an organisation for avoidance of excessive costs and wastage. In India, the reports of Secretariat Reorganisation Committee (headed by Girija Shankar Bajpai, 1947) and The Economy Committee (under Kasturbhai Lalbhai, 1948) & A.D. Gorwala's Report (1951) set the tone for stress for focus on efficiency and economy. Later, Paul H. Appleby's recommendation of setting up of an O&M division by GoI went a long way to promote efficiency in Govt. circles. Also, with the advent of technology in administration, one can notice emphasis on productivity in Govt.

2. Specialisation

It was Max Weber who stressed on the need for specialisation as an important feature of an ideal type of bureaucracy. This brings us to the age-old conflict between the Generalists and the Specialists. Of late, there has been stress on differentiation of structures and functions and allocation of tasks and responsibilities among the personnels based on their specialisation in their respective field. There has been a new dawning with regard to the critical role of a specialist in top posts of the Govt. In fact, the first ARC, 1966 had recommended that every member of the Indian Administrative Services must opt for specialisation in any one of the 8 functional areas it highlighted in its report. Later in 1979, the synthesis between the generalists and the specialists became more feasible with the doors of the Civil Services opened for medical and engineering graduates too. The first ARC did take a cue from the famous Fulton Committee Report (UK) that stressed on the important role specialists can and should be allowed to play in British bureucracy. In India, though the change is not very drastic, yet the trend is unmistakably clear with the growing competition between the public and private sector, expansion of the MNCs, growing stress on technology. Thus, the road to rigorous specialisation appears to be the only path to rapid development.

3. Effective Coordination

Mooney had considered 'coordination' as the first principle of any organisation. There has been a distinctive focus on administrative coordination in the reports of N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar (1949), ARC etc as also in many of the individual state committees. Also, the Committee on Indian Foreign Service chaired by N.R. pillai emphasised on the need to achieve coordination among the several components of the Ministry of External Affairs. Such steps have culminated into setting up of boards, commissions and committees. However, it appears that in the area of structural reorganisation, the Govt.'s approach has remained ambivalent.

4. Administration and Development of Public Personnel

In most of the reports submitted since independence, a lot of focus has been on the salient aspects of personnel administration like manpower, recruitment, career planning, training and promotion, performance appraisal etc. A.D. Gorwala's report (1951), V.T. Krishnamachari's report ( 1962), ARC report on personnel administration (1969), D.S. Kothari's report (1977) etc. - all have made significant contributions to this field.