PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION EVOLUTION AS A

DISCIPLINE,ROLE UNDER LIBERALISATION ,

PRIVATIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION AND RECENT
TRENDS
Overwhelming response to the previous blog. Thank you to all the readers. Here is the next segment as
promised.
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EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AS A DISCIPLINE (FIELD OF STUDY):

It was born in 1887 as a discipline,not as an activity because as an activity as mentioned in my previous

blog,public administration is as old as human existence itself. Woodrow Wilson's thought provoking and
revolutionary paper 'The Study Of Administration' in the Political Science Quarterly brought it along and
that's why he is considered the founder of this discipline.

Public Administration is a combination of both theory and practice. As a discipline it studies and analyses
the machinery and procedure of government while formulating and implementing policies and
that analysis/study gives birth to new ideas,which are then applied to the activity of govt to test the
practicality as to whether it increases efficiency. Therefore they both are interdependent.

There are five stages in the chronology of the evolution of Public Administration as a discipline:

Stage 1: politics administration dichotomy(1887-1926)

Stage 2: principles of administration(1927-1937)
Stage 3: era of challenge(1938-1947)
Stage 4: crises of identity(1948-1970)
Stage 5: public policy perspective(1971 onwards)

The first stage was the manifestation of Woodrow Wilson's view of politics - administration
dichotomy( difference between two things as they are completely opposite). This led to a spurt in the
interest of its studies in various American as well as universities around the globe and reforms were made
in government and thus scholars were attracted to public administration with a new vigour. Woodrow
Wilson propogated this view since at that time people were fed up with the govt. and its various
policies,rampant corruption and the spoils system that prevailed in the bureaucratic framework. This was
the major reason for people to readily lap up his view. L.D. White published a book  '' Introduction to the
Study Of Public Administration'' in 1926 that further buttressed this view.
The second stage of administrative theory was marked by the same fervour of reinforcing the Wilsonian
view of Public Administration of publi-administration dichotomy and evolve a value neutral or rather value
free science of management. It was believed that there are certain principles ( guiding/basic ideas) of
administration that are common to all organizations and will work for all bringing out optimum efficiency.
This was the mature Industrial Revolution period and all that countries were concerned with was
increasing production at any cost in order to earn big. Also Industrial revolution's rapid expansion of
industries led to new problems in management that were uforeseen and therefore difficult to solve. That's
when F.W. Taylor and Henri Fayol stepped in and generated their principles of
administration/management. They were succesful administrators in their own right and therefore their
views hel a lot of water and were readily accepted by the industies world over. Frederich Winslow Taylor
and Henri Fayol advocated for adopting engineering based scientific methods in the field of industrial
work process  in order to increase efficiency and economy. These schools of thought are grouped under
the Classical theory of administration.
Since,we are talking about the Classical theorists of Administration we have to make a very important
mention of Max Weber. His conceptual framework of bureaucracy deserves special mention as it brought
about a paradigm shift in the theory of public administration. He was the first to provide the discipline with
a solid theoretical base. He viewed bureaucracy as a national rules based central system that regulated
the organization's structure and process accordingly to technical knowledge and maximum efficiency. He
was concerned about the evolution of modern civilization with bureaucracies. All the three theorists
mentioned above laid emphasis on the physiological and mechanistic aspects of public administration and
that is why this school of thought apart from being called the Clasiical school of thought is also known as
the Mechanical theory of organization/administration.

The third stage in the evolution of the theory of public administration is known as the era of challenge
because the above mentioned principles and iron cage/mechanistic view of administration and workers
was challenged. The Human relations theory brought about a pragmatic view to administrative issues. It
emphasisied on the human aspects of administration that sprung from the Hawthorne experiments
conducted by Elton Mayo and his colleagues at Harvard Business School in the late 20's and early 30's of
the twentieth century. The main focus of study in this approach was to study the psychological and social
problems of the industrial workers.  The scholars of this theory identified variables like informal
organisation,leadership,morale and motivation for maximum use of human resources in industries. This
led to a far vast study by Herbert Simon and others that developed the Behavioural Science theory. The
behavioural science school of thought propogated by Herbert Simon challenged the principles of
admiistration and its mechanistic ways as mere proverbs where one contradicted the other and thus are
nothing more than general statements based on person to person experience and lacking a theoretical
foudation. Herbert Simon advocated that decision analysis is what should be studied as decision making
is the heart of administration where a decision has to be taken at each and every stage of administration
day in and day out and administration is a series of decisions that lead to implementation and nothing
more. According to Simon if administrative behaviour in an organisational setting has to be anaysed,then
that can only be done by studying the decisions taken by the administrators. Chester Barnard and Edwin
Stene were other two remarkable theorists of the Behavioural school.

The next stage that is the crisis of identity stage is set in the late 20th century where many parts of the
world were just out of wars and colonisation called the developing nations. This phase marked a debate
for the return of values in Public administration and cross cultural as well as cross national study of
administration. The US also faced a host of crisis in the 1960's and the traditional public adminsitration
failed to answer a lot of questions to provide solutions to the problems. Thus grew a need to reinvent
public administration and lead to a question as to whether public administration that had been known as it
is till then was relevant anymore. Thus was born the concept of ' New Public Administration' courtesy
Dwight Waldo from the First Minnowbrook Conference in 1968 attended by young scholars and
practitioners of Public Administration. These were the second generation behaviouralists as per George
Frederickson who was a very important part of the FIrst Minnowbrook Conference and the main convenor
of the 2nd Minnowbrook conference 20 years later in 1988. It laid stress on values in public administration
and a commitedness by administrators and scholars of the discipline towards value formulation and their
implementation. It developed the thought of society and its welfare as the main goal of public
administration in today's times through the public policy approach. It brought democratic humanism and
client orientation as well as the science perspective in New Public Administration. The collapse of the
SOviet Union also strengthened this view.

Public Policy theory,the next stage in the development of Public Administration theory. Publicpolicy is an
attempt by a government to address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions
pertinent to the problem at hand. It is policy that is made for the welfare of the people and their
development. As a discipline public policy perspective is the study of govt. policies for the people and its
pros and cons and how to better the same. Here it has come closer to political science again and also has
incorporated many management principles to help public administration cope up with the dynamics of its
discipline and conduct.

So these were the various stages of Public Administration's evolution as a discipline.

ROLE UNDER LIBERALISATION,PRIVATISATION & GLOBALISATION:

Under LPG the bureaucracy has to play an open and competitive role as the policy of LPG affects the
role,values and skills of public bureaucracy. Liberalisation is the withdrawal of all direct controls of the
govt on the ecoomic sectors through deregulation,delicensing and decontrol of pricing and distribution of
products and services. Privatisation is the transfer of public ownership to private ownership that will help
lead to efficiency and encourage investment that will eventually help in development of infrastructure and
social programmes. Globalisation is the opening up of world trade thus converting the world into a global
village or global market.
Therefore,under these new reforms Public Administration has to very fairly play the role of a
enabler,collaborater,facilitator,co-operation,partnering(through public-pvt partnership in various sectors
like telecom,airlines,electricityetc),regulating the market and directly handling sensitives depts such as
defence,law and order,atomic energy and foreign policy. And with regards to social programmes and
policies effective implementation it can partner up with various NGO's and charity organisations.

RECENT AND CURRENT TRENDS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

Growth of science and technology has brought about a period of stress as well as development in the
field of Public Administration both as an art(way of conducting and actually doing the activies of Public
Administration by administrators) and as a science( academics,field of study for students and scholars).
The recent trends are:
1) Public - Private Partnership : Though the differences in public and pvt administration one must not
forget that if they both team up viz. their respective strengths it can lead to the best of both worlds. Public
administration brings in its expertise on social issues and policies and pvt admin brings in its
specialisation on management and how to improve efficiency to achieve the pre-set goals by the public
policy.

2) Public Administration In Policy making : Public administration as we all know very well can never be
seperated from policy formulation but nowadays it is becoming all the more dominant and is easily seen.
Civil services can give shape to stated policies through exercise of choice and judgement in administering
them and secondly they are engaged in policy formulation through their suggestive,analytical and
interpretative roles.

3) Movement towards political economy: Recently economists have developed new methods of
analysing the cost and benefits of govt. programmes and administrators are choosing more and more
economics as a base of public admin than political science.

4) New emerging goals of Public Administration: Efficiency( read. Technical Efficiency) and

effectiveness are the ultimate goals of Public Administration.

5) Staff and line units are complimentary,not antognostic. Line agencies are the field work agencies
and staff units are the technically specialised co-ordination and facilitating agencies between upper
management from where decisions come and the line agencies who implement them first hand.

6) Human Relations approach in Public Administration: Its main orientation is towards change in

attitudes,values and structures of organisations.

7) People's participation decision making: minority groups and poor as well are now getting their
share.

8) Decentralisation: Panchayats and Municipal corporations constitutional status.

9) Emerging changes in bureaucratic pattern and behaviour: It emphasis upon formal

structure,hierarchy and efficiency. It is the most important in a democratic form of govt for development of
the welfare of the people. It is centrally involved in change and transformation of society. Recently there
has been a growth and spread of new management techniques in public administration. It is cocerned
with human goals now like : life,liberty and pursuit of happiness. The new public administration is
concerned about social equity.sensitivity to human suffering and social needs.
Disaster Management Cycle
It is imperative to understand the Disaster Management Cycle in order to have a holistic & comprehensive
policy for it.
Earlier Disaster Management was viewed as a short term relief endeavour that lasted till some time after
a disaster,but now it has become both pre & post Disaster citing the benefits & lesser losses caused by
preventing a disaster or mitigating it through proper policy. That saved expenditure can be then further
used for development programmes & policies for the country.

STAGES IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT:

1) Before the Disaster: To reduce the potential for human,material or environmental losses caused by
hazards & to ensure that these losses are minimised when the disaster strikes.

2) During the Disaster: To ensure that the needs & provisions of victims are met to alleviate & minimise
suffering.

3) After the disaster: To achieve rapid & durable recovery which does not reproduce the original
vulnerable conditions.

THE DISASTER CYCLE:

1) The Disaster Event/Impact: The real time event of a hazard occurring and affecting the elements at
risk.

2) Disaster Response: This entails restoring physical facilities rehabilitation of affected population,
restoration of lost livelihoods & reconstruction efforts to restore the infrastructure lost or damaged. One
can gauge flaws in the efforts pertaining to policy and planning with respect to location and type of
infrastructure and social schemes to improve the social positioning of underprivileged.
Disaster losses can be mitigated to a large extent by effective response on the part of govt. & civil society.

3) Disaster Recovery: Recovery phase involves implementation of actions to promote sustainable

redevelopment including reconstruction & rehabilitation following a disaster. It is a long term measure.
4) Development: Once the above is done then the development works begins once again, by
development it is meant sustainable development.

RESPONSE MECHANISM IN INDIA:

1) Central Response ( Prime Minister, Cabinet Committees, Home Affairs & Agriculture Minister)

2) Administrative Response ( Operational requirements & provision of Central assistance as per existing
policy)

3) Energising the local govt. to strengthen administrative preparedness for disaster response.

Posted by TheOne at 10:28 PM No comments: 

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Sunday, March 1, 2015

Disaster Management
The recent Uttarakhand & Kashmir floods and its uncontrollable aftermath have once again brought up
the overarching importance of Disaster Management , understanding and predicting a hazard and taking
preventive action for it as well as corrective and remedying action post a disaster.

Now, before proceeding further it is imperative for one to understand the fragile yet important relation
between a Hazard & Disaster.

A) HAZARD: A potentially damaging physical event,phenomenon or human activity that may cause the
loss of life or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation. They
can be natural or man made and single,sequential or combined in their origin and effects.

When a Hazard turns into reality it is termed as a Disaster. It proceeds by cause-effect due to
endogenous (inherent) & exogenous (external) factors that combine to excite the phenomenon into a
large scale destructive event. Disaster Management is an attempt to inquire into the process of a hazard
turning to a disaster and identify the causes and rectify the same through public policy.

CLASSIFICATION OF DISASTERS:

Under the chairmanship of J.C. Pant, a High Powered Committee was constituted in Aug '99 grouped
disasters into the following five categories,based on generic consideration:
1) Water & Climate: Floods,cyclones,tornadoes,hailstorms,cloudbursts,heat/cold wave,snow
avalanches,drought,sea erosion,thunder/lightning.

2) Geological: Landslides,mudflows,earthquakes,large fires,dam failures and bursts,mine fires.

3) Biological: Epidemics,pest attacks,cattle epidemics,food poisoning.

4) Chemical, Industrial & Nuclear: Chemical and Industrial disasters, nuclear disasters.

5) Accidental: Forest fires, urban fires, mine flooding, oil spills, major building collapse, serial bomb blasts,
festival related disasters, electrical disasters and fires, air and road and rail accidents, boat capsizing,
village fire.

NODAL MINISTRIES COORDINATING ALL ACTIVITIES OF STATE & DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION:

TYPES OF DISASTER/CRISIS NODAL MINISTRY

Air Accidents Ministry of Civil Aviation

Civil Strife Ministry of Home Affairs

Major breakdown of any of the Essential Services Concerned Ministries

posing widespread problem

Chemical Disasters Ministry Of Environment

Biological Disaster Ministry of Health

Nuclear Accident inside/outside the country Department of Atomic Energy

which poses health or other hazards to people of
India.

But there are still many that are missing like heat waves & migrant issues. Also it is being increasingly
realized that many natural disasters are also due to man made causes, reason being policy disasters
rather than as a result of nature's vagaries or designs of fate.
Experience of floods in India has proven that more deaths are caused due to epidemic outbreaks
following vector proliferation in accumulated waters rather than the flood itself which proves the system
failure.

The lack of timely decision making & action after droughts by the govt. leads to multiple deaths of
farmers.

Earthquakes are majorly increased in today's times due to abuse of natural resources by man alongwith
bad policy decisions.

Disasters also lead to major economic damage and diversion of financial resources to non plan
expenditures instead of plan development expenditures.

INDIA'S KEY VULNERABILITIES:

1) Coastal states particularly on the East Coast & Gujarat are vulnerable to cyclones.

2) 4 crore hectare landmass is vulnerable to floods.

3) 68% of net sown area is prone to droughts.

4) 55% of total area is in seismic zones III - V, hence prone to earthquakes.

5) Sub-Himalayan sector & Western Ghats are prone to landslides.

MAN MADE DISASTERS:

1) Road/Traffic accidents

2) Nuclear, Chemical & Biological threats

3) International terrorism

4) Communal riots

5) HIV/AIDS

6) Food insecurity, poverty, worsening health care,dirty water & sanitation, uncontrolled urbanisation &
common disease.

7) Civil war & International wars

These are just a few to name, the list goes on. The few actions taken are that now Disaster Management
has become a part of plan commitments thus getting it  more priority and more resource allocations.
Retrofitting & Earthquake resistant structures et al are being undertaken too.

The agenda now according to the 10th Plan for disaster management is development of capacity at local
levels through effective decentralisation, improvement in law and order administration, through
modernisation & training, urban development with a perspective of disaster mitigation planning involving
all stakeholders.

VULNERABILITY PROFILING:
All this calls for a thorough vulnerability( threat) profiling of India to remedy the above.

Following steps are imperative for the vulnerability assessment and preparedness in high risk zones:

1) Identification of various hazard prone areas. Preparation of detailed vulnerability profiles, mapping food
insecurity, aviation hazard, landslide hazard, etc.

2) Vulnerability & Risk assessment of buildings.

3) Developing disaster damage scenarios.

4) Developing technical guidelines for hazard resistant construction.

5) Upgrading of hazard resistance of existing housing stock by retrofitting.

6) Crafting techno-legal regime to be adopted for infrastructure development.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS:

1) Global warming & Extreme climate: This leads to El Nino & La Nina having increased impacts leading
to disasters. Entire water system is being disrupted by melting of Himalayan glaciers. A large number of
deaths are caused due to heat and cold waves from northern and coastal states.
2) Agro Forestry: Large scale deforestation across the globe coupled with faulty management practices
have resulted in all kinds of environmental degradations such as wind and water erosion, physical &
chemical degradation of soil, water & biodiversity, global warming, floods,droughts & desertifications.

Agro forestry is the solution to all these issues.

Agro Forestry: Agroforestry or agro-sylviculture is a land use management system in which trees or
shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland. It combines agricultural and forestry
technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems.
( source - Wikipedia)

Lets summarise the benefits of Agro - Forestry:

a) Control of soil degradation

b) Control of desertification

c) Flood control

d) Drought Moderation

e) Reduction in groundwater pollution caused by high inputs of fertilisers

f) Increasing biodiversity in farming and watershed scale.

g) Increasing food security and reducing pressure on land

h) Checking deforestation and its impact on environment

i) Reducing pressure on forests though on farm supply of fuel wood,fodder and other forest products

j) Reduction in build up of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases

k) Disaster prevention,rehabilitation & reconstruction

3) Urban Risks: Rapid urbanisation is increasing at unprecedented levels. High density areas with poorly
built and maintained infrastructure are subjected to natural hazards, environmental
degradation,fires,flooding & earthquakes.

DEVELOPMENT VS. ENVIRONMENT:

Development should never come at the cost of environment. We all have seen the effects of
commercialisation & development activities in Uttarakhand & Delhi and other states. Therefore, what is
required are proper eco-friendly and environment friendly development policies.