Indian Journal of Public Administration

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-08-12

ISBN:: 0019-5561

Issue Number

No. 70-2, June 2024

Latest documents

Book review: S. Narayan, The Dravidian Years: Politics and Welfare in Tamil Nadu
S. Narayan, The Dravidian Years: Politics and Welfare in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, 262 pp., ₹550 (Hardcopy).
Editorial
Promotion of Medical Tourism in India: A Discussion Paper
Medical tourism has been a rising service industry across the world for the last two decades. This paper outlines the theoretical perspective that governs the study of medical tourism, analyses the development of the sector in India and puts forth suggestions on how to promote further growth of medical tourism in the country. The paper proposes that the observed clustering of medical facilities in particular cities in India can lend itself to the development of health cities, which could have smart infrastructure geared towards the provision of world-standard medical care. The health cities could allow all stakeholders of the industry to come together and serve as generators of revenues that can be ploughed back into public healthcare provision.
Book review: Nilmadhab Mohanty, Political Economy of Mining in India
Nilmadhab Mohanty, Political Economy of Mining in India. New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications Pvt Ltd, 2017, 240 pp., ₹695 (Hardcover).
Book review: Abhishek Choudhary, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924–1977
Abhishek Choudhary, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924–1977. Pune: Picador, 2023, 432 pp., ₹899.
Environmental Governance at Crossroads: Civil Society’s Fight Against Industrial Pollution in Kathua Industrial Area, Jammu and Kashmir
As a key stakeholder within the domain of environmental governance, civil society influences the actions and outcomes of regulatory mechanisms and organisations, in addition to the state, market and communities. The research article attempts to understand the influence civil society exerts in addressing the environmental concerns of three village panchayats in Kathua district, Jammu and Kashmir, by studying the case of industrial pollution caused by Kathua Industrial Area. Issues like severity and impact of pollution on the affected population, awareness, participation and role of the civil society, and the ways in which the affected population negotiates with the problem of industrial pollution are analysed. It is found that civil society is unable to exert bottom-up pressure in influencing policy actions and outcomes in the study area. The reasons behind such an inability and the measures required to make civil society a reckoning force in environmental governance are also discussed in the article.
Book review: Uddipana Goswami, Conflict and Reconciliation: Politics of Ethnicity in Assam
Uddipana Goswami, Conflict and Reconciliation: Politics of Ethnicity in Assam. India: Routledge, 2014, 223 pp., ₹695, ISBN 978-0-415-71113-5.
An Analysis of Article 356 in Coalition Era of Indian Politics
Article 356 of the Indian Constitution has often been subjected to the partisan use by the successive Central governments since 1950. However, the shift from a single-party majority government to a multi-party coalition governments in national politics since early 1990s has largely influenced the scope and intent of invoking this Article. The coalition government’s survival with the backing of regional parties has indeed been a major factor in diminishing the incentives for the arbitrary and frequent invocation of Article 356. In this backdrop, the present article explains how the political change brought about by the coalition governments since 1990s has created the conditions for restraining Central transgressions on state governance, and also discusses the prospects of rationally employing this Article in the changing political conditions of the country. The argument of this paper is that—although the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party to national political dominance since the 2014 general elections has raised apprehension about the move towards centralised federalism, it is not likely to upset the current pattern of restrained use of this Article.
Social Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study of Selected Public Sector Undertakings
This study analyses the social impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending undertaken by the major Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) in India. An attempt has been made to measure the social impact of CSR spending on selected PSUs by taking suitable proxies. A comparative study of the social impact of the selected PSUs with respect to CSR spending has been made by four-quadrant approach, taking high and low CSR spending and high and low social impact after normalising the data. Multiple regression analysis is used to measure the social impacts of different CSR activities. CSR activities have been ranked in terms of their social impact.
CSR Activity as a Measure of Efficiency in Central Public Sector Enterprises
A large majority of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSE) have been in existence for more than six decades and might soon complete a century of existence. They may soon qualify to be called as companies ‘Built to Last’. Notwithstanding the clamouring for ‘privatisation’ and the frequent interference by the government in matters solely concerning the management, the large majority of CPSEs continue to show profits year after year. This is best exemplified by the long list of CPSEs contributing towards society’s overall development under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Act. This article considers the top seventy-seven CPSEs, ranging from the smallest to the largest, which have been supporting CSR activities in the country for the past several years.