Editorial
| DOI | 10.1177/0019556119835332 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
This issue of the Indian Journal of Public Administration includes twelve articles,
three notes, one document and five book reviews. The opening article by Rajani
Ranjan Jha discusses the crucial and occasionally controversial Prime Minister’s
Office (PMO), called ‘The fulcrum of Indian Administration’ by the author. The
evolution of this organisation is traced from Nehru to Modi, and a generalisation
is offered that it changes with almost every incumbent depending upon one’s per-
sonality and power. The most critical and significant transformations occurred
under the reigns of Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai. The former expanded it
rather enormously, while the latter cut it to size and proportionately enhanced the
Cabinet Secretariat.
B.P. Mathur postulates that the discourse of development in India needs to be
rethought in order to anchor it in its cultural ethos. He is particularly critical of
the neoliberal model of development and contends that it is antithetical to both
constitutional values of the Indian Republic and India’s cultural ethos. He finds
faults with neoliberalism—like many others in India and now increasingly also
by liberal democratic public intellectuals like the Nobel laureate in Economics,
Joseph Stiglitz (2006; 2012; 2017)—because it causes ecological devastation,
social and economic inequalities, consumerist culture and unemployment. The
author escapes the extreme Rightwing nationalist and nativist political reaction to
neoliberal globalisation causing de-globalisation, or at any rate ‘slowbalisation’,
and instead offers the alternatives of the Middle Path, Gandhism, welfarist state
and dharma as the guiding principles.
Bulbul Sen offers an informed public policy analysis of public procurement
reforms for the ease of doing business in India. The author discusses in detail the
Public Procurement Bill, 2012, further tweaked by the Modi government with
the objective of helping his ‘Make in India’ goals work. Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley’s 2015–2016 budget speech signalled the government’s commitment to
enact it, but it has not yet happened. A major limitation of the Bill is that it covers
only the union government ministries and departments, while the public sector
undertakings and state and local governments fall beyond its purview.
Sonia Munjal and Richa Mishra bring under their analytical scanner the
relationship between personality orientations and the levels of stress on procras-
tination in middle-level managers from a steel-manufacturing industry situated
in the state of Jharkhand. Their conclusion is that ‘managers with chance (external
orientation of personality) as their LOC (locus of control) dimension procrastinated
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
65(1) 9–11, 2019
© 2019 IIPA
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DOI:10.1177/0019556119835332
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