Indian Journal of Public Administration

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

ISBN:: 0019-5561

Issue Number

Latest documents

Book review: Sudhanshu Ranjan, Justice vs. Judiciary: Justice Enthroned or Entangled in India?
Sudhanshu Ranjan, Justice vs. Judiciary: Justice Enthroned or Entangled in India? New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2019, xiv + 384 pp., ₹995 (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-949049-3, 0-19-949049-X.
Book review: Iqbal Chand Malhotra & Maroof Raza, Kashmir’s Untold Story: Declassified
Iqbal Chand Malhotra & Maroof Raza, Kashmir’s Untold Story: Declassified. India: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 202 pp. £22.50 (hardback). ISBN: 9789388912853.
Book review: Govind Bhattacharjee, Story of Consciousness
Govind Bhattacharjee, Story of Consciousness. Noida, India: Vigyan Prasar, 2019, 372 pp. ₹450.00.
Book review: Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa
Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. New York: Zed Books, 2000, XV+168 pp., $22.50 (paperback), ISBN:1-85649-859-X; $65.00 (hardback), ISBN: 1-85649-858-1.
Book review: Ram Sewak Sharma, The Making of Aadhar: The World’s Largest Identity Platform
Ram Sewak Sharma, The Making of Aadhar: The World’s Largest Identity Platform. New Delhi, India: Rupa Publishers, 2020, 240 pp., ₹595.00.
Current Challenges in Diffusion of Solar Power in India
Focus on Quality in Higher Education in India
These days we find a lot more focus on ‘quality’ in the field of higher education than ever before. In fact, it is the concept of quality that makes higher education ‘higher’. Earlier, the pursuit of higher education was elitist. The focus used to be on ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’. However, with the massification of higher education in the wake of knowledge-based and technology-driven modern economies worldwide, we find the focus shifting to employability of the students in rapidly changing world of work. The quality education implies not only equipping the students with requisite knowledge and skills for their chosen career field but also to prepare them for lifelong learning. It is expected to train the students to think and act critically beyond university in the interest of society and humankind. The present article focuses on the changing perspectives of the quality in higher education in India. The methodology adopted is analytical, comparative and empirical.
National Cadet Corps (NCC): Its Role in Integrating North Eastern Region (NER) with Mainstream India
To the North Eastern Region (NER) of India, lie the unexplored states of the Indian Union. This region holds a unique place in the federal structure of India. This article attempts to scrutinise the diversity of NER, along with the potential of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) as a medium to change, uplift and assimilate it with pan India. The article aims to comprehend how NER can accommodate the regional identities and cultural affinities with Indian mainstream identity through the intervention of NCC at college and university level. The methodology of this article is based on secondary resources such as published books, journals, web pages, reports, newspapers and online sources. The article is analytical and descriptive in nature based on thematic approach.
Personal Liability: Forging New Tools of Accountability in Public Law
In 1991, two decisions passed by benches headed by Kuldip Singh J. marked an unprecedented shift to holding public officers personally liable to pay damages for arbitrary orders. The Supreme Court of India imposed damages to the quantum of fifty lakh rupees on Captain Satish Sharma, the former Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, for arbitrarily allotting fifteen petrol outlets out of his discretionary quota to allottees related to him or his officials. Similarly, Sheila Kaul, the former Minister of Urban Development, was ordered to pay damages of sixty lakh rupees for illegal allotment of shops from her discretionary quota to her associates. While the two decisions ushered in a revolution of personal liability in the arena of public law, one was overturned by a review judgement, and the other has been simply forgotten despite being upheld in the review petition. In light of the growing number and prominence of misfeasance by public officers, this article considers the need for rethinking the theory of personal liability to compensate the public or individual loss adequately, deter the officials and assess it as an alternative to traditional mechanisms of public accountability.
Revisiting Fred W. Riggs’ Model in the Context of ‘Prismatic’ Societies Today
F. W. Riggs initiated seminal areas of enquiry and research right from the beginning of his journey as an author and a theorist in public administration. His lifetime publications testify to a search for an ‘authentic’ model for analysing the administrative structures and behaviour of developing countries since the 1960s. Riggs pursued what is known as the ‘ecological’ study of public administration which presumes that public administration, functioning in different environments, influences and is influenced by the environment in which it functions. Scholars of comparative public administration have long been familiar with the ‘fused– prismatic–diffracted model’, which was later reformulated by Riggs to exert enormous influence on the understanding of public administration and organisational behaviour in different parts of the world. In the wake of the tremendous transformation with diverse developmental strategies in the Third World and South Asia in particular, in the last fifty years, it becomes important to re-examine Riggs’ models both in the Indian and other developing country contexts today.