Crisis of Public Administration as a Discipline in India

Reviewing the current status of the public administration discipline in the Indian universities, this paper raises questions about the relevance of so-called theories and approaches in public administration, developed in an alien context, to Indian realities. It is argued that the management science orientation and the practical concerns of the discipline have taken it away from its broader social science moorings. A meaningful discipline of public administration in India has to reckon with the undifferentiated nature of administration and politics and the deep involvement of the administration in the social structure and processes. The theories of the state, especially the theoretical developments in the conceptualisation of the 'third world' state, need to be related to the structure and operation of public organisations. Public administration as a subject of study has thus to be located within a broader field of political theory. A discipline that avoids analysing the role of administration in sustaining a structure of domination, repression and injustice, is not a genuine social science but a courtier subject.