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Development Administration Development administration as a concept in public administration started to emerge in 1950 and 60s in the background of the cold war competition between the capitalist western and the communist world. It became a strategic endeavour on part of the Western world, especially USA, to stop spread of communism in the newly emerged post-colonial nation-states. This was done by extending managerial, financial, and technical assistance to transform the public administration in the developing nations as development administration, which was to ensure rapid modernization and development on the line of western model. Development administration is also related to modernisation and development theory propounded (promoted or given) by thinkers in USA during 1960 and 70s. As per the theory, modernization and development has a definite path, by following which the developing nations will reach to that point where the Western world had reached many decades before. Hence, development administration became the administrative mechanism to take the developing countries on the same developmental path as travelled by the western countries few centuries before. The prescription given for the development administration was that it should be action and goal oriented to achieve faster economic development. The concept of development administration is also linked closely to the general acceptance of interventionist and welfare state during 1970s in USA and UK. The state was supposed to intervene in all socio-economic aspects of the nation and ensure provision of basic needs to its citizen. Development administration became the administrative tool to ensure the goals of the welfare state. 3rd world developing countries readily adopted the welfare state model which they believed is required for rapid socio-economic development along with nation building. Development administration became the action arm of the welfare state. Development administration in countries like India represented adoption of mixed economic model in which state through its administration played important role in the economic management of the country. In a nutshell, development administration as an approach to Public Administration originated in the context developing nations as the prescription of USA, in line with western liberal ideology, and in the strategic interest of the

developed western world. However, it acquired different meaning and connotations in different 3rd world countries. In general, it was the form of public administration which was more oriented towards ensuring faster economic development by formulating plans, policies, and programs and their implementation. It was different from the normal public administration, which following the Weberian bureaucratic model, was concerned only with maintenance of law and order, defence, communication, and other sovereign activities of the state. At organisational level development administration also meant ‘development of Administration’ as coined by Fred Riggs and Lucien Pye. It was transforming the bureaucratic public organisation into a less hierarchical, flexible, trimmed down, responsive, adaptive, and result oriented public organisation. It also required that public administrator should behave more like public manager, who are to manage public organisation and implement large scale developmental projects.

The administration concerned with developmental activities in theThird World nations is called development administration. The dictionary defines development administration as ‘the enhancement or improvement of techniques, processes and systems organized to increase the administrative capacity of a nation, usually newly emerging nations’ (Chandler and Plano 1982: 24). Martin Landau defines it as the ‘engineering of social change’ (Landau 1970: 74). Development administration, according to Montgomery, is ‘carrying planned change in the economy or capital infrastructure or to a lesser extent in the social services, especially health and education’ (quoted in Naidu 1996: 148). According to Merle Fainsod, development administration ‘embraces the array of new functions assumed by the developing countries embarking on the path of modernization and industrialization. Development Administration ordinarily involves the establishment of machinery for planning economic growth, and mobilizing and allocating resources to expand national income’ (quoted in Naidu 1996: 148). Edward Weidner, another prominent exponent of the concept, tries to introduce development administration in a proper and scientific way. He views development as a dynamic process of change or transformation from one state of being to another. The main goals of development in developing countries, according to Weidner, are nation building and socio-economic progress. Weidner defined development administration as ‘an action-oriented, goal-oriented administrative

system...guiding an organization towards the achievement of progressive political, economic and social objectives’ (Weidner 1970: 399). Fred W. Riggs defines development administration as ‘organized efforts to carry out programmes or projects thought by those involved to serve developmental objectives’ (Riggs 1970: 73). According to Donald C. Stone, ‘Broadly, Development Administration is concerned with achieving national development’ (Naidu1996: 149). In his opinion, it is primarily concerned with the tasks and processes of formulating and implementing the four P’s: Plans, Policies, Programmes, and Projects, in respect to developmental goals and objectives. If it is preoccupied with programmatic management, development administration may be understood as organized efforts to carry out programmes or projects thought by those in power to serve the developmental objectives of society. Development administration, according to George F. Gant, is the term used to denote the complex of agencies, management systems, and the process a government establishes to achieve its developmental goals. It is the public mechanism set-up to relate the several components of development in order to articulate and accomplish national socioeconomic objectives. It is the adjustment of bureaucracy to the vastly increased number, variety, and complexity of governmental functions required to respond to public demands for development. Development administration is the administration of policies, programmes, and projects to serve development purposes. In brief, development administration is the process of carrying out development programmes and projects in the direction of nation building and socioeconomic progress through an administrative organization. The primary objective of development administration is to strengthen the administrative machinery, which would bring about socioeconomic change. It is concerned with the establishment of social justice through equitable distribution of social and economic benefits among the various social groups in society. Its aim is to promote economic growth by industrialization. Development administration is also concerned with political development which includes (a) equality, (b) the capacity of the political systems to produce according to demands, and (c) differentiation of governmental roles and organizations in the process of meeting their challenges. It attempts to bring about changes in the values and attitudes of people, which differ from the existing ones and are supportive of the developmental activities. Development administration also requires administrative modernization, that is, creation of new administrative structures and reorientation of the existing ones to suit the needs of developmental

programmes.Thus, development administration aims at transforming an entire society, with social, economic, political, and administrative elements intermeshed for purposes of change.

Approaches of development administration The various approaches of development can be categorized under two major headings, i.e., Initial Approaches and Modern approaches. 1. Initial approaches: The scholars who supported the development theory during the era of the 1950s and the 1960s view the term in the western context. They believed that the developing countries and under developing countries had to progress in a western way. The promoters of this approach have confidence that the Western developed societies have attained administrative proficiencies that are transferable to underdeveloped or developing countries. The supporters of this approach were of the view that if the bureaucratic changes can be brought about then the political development will be achieved more easily. If such a change is accomplished, then the political and economic development can proceed more rapidly. According to them, the indicator for the development is Gross National Product through which the development of the Third World countries can be measured. The following approaches fall under this ambit:  Economic approach: According to this approach, the underdeveloped countries should save more and invest it as a capital. Economic progress is possible only through the process of industrialization. The promoters of this approach are Keynes, J.S. Mill and Adam Smith, among others.  Diffusion approach: According to this approach, the third world countries tried to embrace capital, technology and social structure from westernized countries. Hence, development is explained in terms of diffusion. It was propounded by R.S. Edari and E. M. Rogers. In the work, Diffusion of Innovations’, Rogers defines diffusion as the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. He also emphasized industrialization for development.  Psychosomatic approach: This approach laid emphasis on individual personality mannerisms like accomplishment-enthusiasm and change orientation. The chief exponents of this theory are David McClelland, Everett Hagen and Inkeles. Hence, this approach emphasizes governmental reforms in administrative structural arrangements, personnel management, administrative organization and tax and revenue collection. 2. Modern approaches: During the 1970s and 1980s, the development theorists laid emphasis on context-based approaches to development. There is no single concrete theory of development. It looks into the following features:  Widespread involvement, information sharing  Independence and objectivity in development  Restrictive growth of population  Greater equality in dissemination of development aids

A number of characteristics of development administration can be identified. Change Orientation

Development administration is change oriented, that is, its central concern is to bring about desirable socioeconomic changes. Its aim is to bring about planned change to meet the nation’s eco-nomic, social, and cultural objectives. This feature distinguishes development administration from traditional administration which is primarily concerned with maintenance of status quo. The developing nations do face the challenges of poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, and social backwardness. The main task of administration in these nations is to bring a constructive change in such fields. After Independence, the Government of India set up the Planning Commission and formulated five-year plans to bring about planned socioeconomic changes. Goal Orientation Development administration is goal oriented, that is, it is concerned with achieving certain specific programmatic results. Developing countries face a number of socioeconomic problems. It is development administration through which the goals of development, namely, social justice, industrial–agricultural growth, and modernization can be achieved. For example, agricultural development was the main goal of the Indian administration during the First Five Year Plan (1951– 56). Client Orientation Development administration is concerned with satisfying the need of its clients. It is primarily concerned with the uplift of the poor and downtrodden sections of the society. In India, SCs, STs, women, and weaker sections of society are the important clients to be served by the administration. A number of developmental schemes are introduced in order to uplift these sections of society. People are given active participation in the developmental programmes. The 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts have also reserved seats for the weaker sections of society in Panchyats and municipalities, in order to ensure their participation in the local governance. Time Orientation Development administration is time oriented. This means it is concerned for completion of development programmes within a time frame. Developmental goals are set, and projects formulated and implemented to achieve the goals within a specific time limit. Since the socioeconomic goals have to be brought about as quickly as possible, the timeliness of all activities assume considerable significance in development administration. Peter Savage (1970) have well explained the temporal dimension of development administration. Citizen-participation Orientation Development administration requires the active participation of the citizens in the developmental programmes. Without people’s cooperation and participation in the developmental tasks, the desired socioeconomic changes cannot be achieved. Therefore, public bureaucracy must involve the citizens actively into the developmental programmes. This close nexus between ‘public and administration’ is an essential attribute of developmental administration. That is why the

involvement of Panchayati Raj Institutions in planning and administration has found renewed support in the development strategy of India. Ecological Orientation Development administration is an open system, which actively interacts with its environment. It receives a feedback from the social system and responds to the demands upon it by the system. The changes in administration affect its environment and changes in the environment also have its bearing on administration. It requires the qualities of flexibility and responsiveness in administrative actions and methods. The credit for exploring the ecological dimension in public administration goes to Fred W. Riggs. Innovativeness Development administration is innovative (Katz 1970: 120), since it is concerned with societal changes in achieving developmental objectives. It is dynamic and progressive in thoughts and action. It is interested in identifying and applying new structures and methods, techniques, and policies and programmes so that the objectives and goals of development are achieved with minimum possible resources and time. For example, India has experimented with many new policies, programmes, institutions, and procedures which can be termed as hallmarks of development administration. We have introduced various development programmes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), tribal development programmes, and so on. These programmes broadly aim at removal of poverty, unemployment, and creation of job opportunities. Thus, development administration has to be innovative enough in order to realize the predetermined objectives of development. From the above discussion, it can be derived that development administration is a dynamic concept. It is characterized by its special orientation for change, goal, client, and timeliness of its projects. It is very sensitive to the environmental factors affecting administration and involves people in its programmes and projects. These elements are inevitable for development administration in order to realize the goals of nation building and socioeconomic changes in the Third World nations.

Critical evaluation of development administration: From the above discussion it is obvious that development administration was western prescription guided by western ideologies and aimed to fulfil the Western interest. It had Eurocentric and ethnocentric overtones. It assumed that modernization and development can be achieved only by travelling a definite path of development as travelled by the western countries. It neglected the socio-cultural context of the 3rd world developing countries. The concept also neglected the wider meaning of development. It was narrowly focused on growth of GDP numbers. Development administration resulted into excessive bureaucratisation in the economic management, corruption, nepotism, and crony capitalism. In India it was called ‘licence permit Raj’. Economic and entrepreneurial spirit of individuals were suppressed by the development administration. Another criticism is that it harmed developing nations by making them a satellite of the Western world, wherein developing world became the source of agricultural products and industrial raw material and market for the goods and services produced in the developed World. Thus, development administration help make developing nations more dependent on developed world. Second, the strategy of development administration has been questioned by characterizing it as the First World’s diplomatic effort to stem the tide of insurgency and the communist movement in the Third World

(Chakrabarty 2007: 45). Third, Development administration has also been criticized as ‘ideological’ and ‘Eurocentric’. The model of modernization and development is seen as an exported model of civilization that is incompatible with life in most Third World countries. Hence, there has been a persistent demand for a ‘non-ethnocentric’ theory of development and an alternative conception of Third World development (Chakrabarty 2007: 45). Forth, the sub-optimization criticism has come from developmentalists like Fred Riggs, Lucian Pye, and Samuel N. Eisenstadt, among others. They have cautioned against bureaucracy, reinforcing devices that might undermine and weaken political institutions and processes. As Riggs argued, ‘The existence of a career bureaucracy without corresponding strength in the political institutions does not necessarily lead to administrative effectiveness’ (Chakrabarty 2007: 44). Without firm political guidance, the argument further continues, bureaucrats have weak incentives to provide good service whatever their formal, preentry training, and professional qualifications be. They tend to use their effective control to safeguard their expedient bureaucratic interests-tenure, seniority, rights, fringe benefits, and the right to violate official norms, rather than advance the achievement of programme goals (Chakrabarty 2007: 45). Fifth, it is said that development administration means increased state bureaucratic control over individual human beings. Development administration contains implicit authoritarian assumptions. The authoritarian approach of the civil servants is not likely to motivate the public to actively participate in implementing plans and programmes. Sixth, the basic administrative structures in developing societies are not only elitist in character but also generally imitative rather than indigenous to the society. The borrowed Western model of administration does not fit into the needs of development administration. There is a widespread discrepancy between form and reality, wide gap between government proposals and their implementation. Besides, there is the shortage of technically qualified and trained personnel capable of performing the developmental tasks. Finally, the process of development presupposes a system of bureaucracy that accepts development as its paramount goal. But the bureaucracies in developing societies have a tendency to emphasize non-productive orientation. The behaviour of civil servants is said to have poor citizen orientation and poorer commitment to work. They lack sensitivity to the poor and their needs. Rules, regulations, and forms are given precedence over the substance. They lack the necessary skills and competence to carry out developmental tasks.

New public administration Since its beginning in 1887 from an article of Woodrow Wilson, Public Administration as academic discipline has been constantly in search of its identity, purpose, relevance, and bases. New Public Administration (NPA) was an important stepping stone ...