Paper 1

INTRODUCTION
HANDOUT 1.1 – MEANING SCOPE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
20/06/2023

In this handout we have discussed the meaning, scope and significance of

Public Administra[on in general terms. you are advised to supplement
your class notes with this handout to develop a comprehensive
understanding related to this chapter.

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What is Public Administration?
Public administration is not a new entity. It has
been around as long as we had a government in
some form or other. During ancient times, when
people used to live a nomadic life, the nature and
scope of public administration were limited. To be
specific ‒ the survival of the tribe was the aim of
the Administration. As times progressed, with the
advancement of technology and growth of
civilization, public administration was entrusted
with the task of sustaining and carrying forward
the baton of human civilization.
“If our civilization fails it will be mainly because of
a breakdown of administration.ʼ
- W.V. Donham
The study of administration becomes crucial
since it can offer goldilocks conditions for other
human activities to flourish. With the rapid
advancement in technologies and increasing
globalization, aspirations of people have
increased manyfold. A government
administration needs to be ready to deal with such
diverse set of challenges. In the words of Prof.
Charles A. Beard “The future of civilized
government, and even I think, of civilization itself
rests upon our ability to develop a science and a
philosophy and a practice of administration
competent to discharge the functions of civilized
society”
In this context, naturally government
administration cannot be carried out in an
arbitrary manner. A government in 21st century
cannot act in unilateral or authoritarian manner.
Rather it has to act as per certain set of rules, it
has to follow certain rules ‒ a law of the land
(constitution), the administration has to fulfill
certain moral obligations that it has to the citizen.
Thus, the tasks in front of public administrators
are not simple. They are supposed to understand
the complexities, diversities and realities of
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societies and carryout the necessary reforms
without excluding or hurting sentiments of people
in the society.
This is where public administration differs from
the private administration. In public
administration, the administrator is supposed to
be aware of values much more than am
administrator in private administration. A
government is supposed to serve its citizens as
citizen and not merely as customers. A
democratic government is usually bound by a
constitution which delineates aspirations of the
people, it defines institutions such as parliament
and bestows powers on these institutions to fulfill
those aspirations. It also sets procedure of
electing a government which can later formulate,
executive and implement various policies to
makes the ideal values such as equality, liberty,
fraternity as living reality in the society.
A private administration or a business can also
implement such goals through their policies (e.g.,
TATA) but they do not have such obligation to
the people. But a government has that obligation
towards its citizen and administrators being the
executives, they are supposed to be aways aware
of this moral angle.
“Administration is a moral act and an administrator
is a moral agent”
O Tead.
Based on the ideas discussed so far, we can
conclude that ‒
public administration consists of some
administrative apparatus which includes people1
who are working in the administration, the
institutions2 in which they work and the set of
rules and moral standards3 which they must follow
and be accountable to the people in general. This
administrative apparatus makes sure that the
goals decided by political processes are
implemented for the betterment of society and
people in general.
1

This presents a general idea of public
administration ‒ what it is. But We need more
specificity to study public administration as a
discipline ‒ with its own tools and techniques to
understand what a government can do. how that
government does something? And what can be
done to improve it?
To understand this, scholars decided to study
public administration as,
1. an activity: What are the functions of the
government and how the government is
performing it?
2. a discipline: after finding out
governmental activities, the scholars
study it in a systematic manner to develop
a guiding manual for future
administrators.
3. an organization: this involves studies
various structures associated with public
administration.
There are several other interpretations based on
our viewpoint. We adopt such diverse viewpoints
to create a holistic picture to study public
administration and various aspects that it should
cover.
What is Public in Public Administration?
The word public has a specific meaning to it.
Public usually refers to the collective body of
individuals who share a common interest or
concern. It typically implies a larger group beyond
individual identities, often associated with the
general population or society as a whole. On the
other hand, the term "people" refers to individuals
in a broad sense, emphasizing their status as
individuals or members of a community.
Thus, Public in public administration indicates a
common group of people. Here the word is not
just limited to citizen rather anyone who comes in
the ambit of governance in a given territory. E.g.,
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along with citizen of India, the foreigner visiting
India does benefit from the public utility, public
goods, and services provided by government of
India.
Origin of administration.
Administration- The word administration is
derived from the Latin word, administrare
meaning being of service or being helpful.
Together with the word public the translation for
public administration would be serving the
people.
Thus, public administration is the discipline that
studies how the government organizations serve
the public goods though developing and
implementing public policies, and what is needed
to conduct this business in an efficient, effective
and legitimate and rational way so as to optimize
serving the public good.
Here, a student of public administration needs to
understand this value premise very clearly so as to
understand the responsibilities of an public officer
and the moral dilemma that might arise while
performing its duties. Public administration is
distinct due to its publicness character. This also
distinguishes it from private administration as
public administration is supposed to distribute
the public goods and promote public interest.
(Supplement classroom discussion to understand values
premises in public administration.)
Naturally a question emerges ‒ what is this public
good? And how a government determines what is
public interest?
Public Interest ‒
Public administration has been defined by various
theorists according to their perception of the role.
Public Administration performs its functions in a
society within a political system. Here as an
organization, it is not only serving the goods and
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services but carries out certain values in terms of
outcomes such as propagating justice, equity
sense of security and relief for the vulnerable.
With that said, the resources at the hands of
public administration are limited.
Simultaneously, administrators need to take
certain decisions in the field while delivering the
goods and service. They need to consider public
interest. Here public interest is not the interest of
majority. Rather, public interest is general
interest of all people involved or going to be
affected.
The challenge here is how to determine public
interest. To resolve this dilemma certain
philosophical perspectives can be used.
1. Intuitionism: This perspective assumes
that the administrator is the best judge of
what is public interest. Thus, it provides
discretion in the hands of administrator to
determine the public interest. It assumes
that administrators can make best moral
decisions. This assumption may lead to
misuse of authority and ultimately end up
in harming the public interest.
Further, intuitionalism is not a scientific
approach since this approach of
determining public interest relies on
intuition of an individual which cannot be
evaluated on scientific grounds.
Intuitionalism leads to subjectivity and
thus this approach cannot produce
consistent results.
2. Perfectionism: This approach considers
interest of only those who are capable.
Plato had described this philosophy with
the example of flutes. If there are 10 flutes
available then in aa given society, who
should get these flutes? If we give away
flutes randomly, it will defeat the purpose
of flute since not every person getting it
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will be able to play the flute fluently. That
will be a waste of resource. The right
approach according to Plato is ‒ the flutes
should be given to one who can play them
properly.
Thus, in this philosophy of fulfilling
public interest the administration serves
only those who can maximize benefit of
good or services provided. Naturally this
approach emerges as elitist and it would
exclude the poor/vulnerable and would
justify absence of socially conscious policy
such as reservation.
3. Utilitarianism (Bentham and Mills)
Utilitarianism tries to improve upon
previous philosophies of determining
public interest. Utilitarianism seeks to
maximize benefit for maximum number
of people. Thus, it considers an action in
the public interest if it is leading to
maximum benefit. E.g., in a
developmental project of a dam,
Utilitarianism would justify relocation of
few hundred villagers living along the
bank of a river since the development
project would benefit thousands of people
in the urban area.
4. Theory justice: (john Rawls) This
approach tries to overcome limitations of
utilitarianism. The theory justice states
that one should benefit not at the cost of
others and the distribution of resources
should be equitable.
To understand this, we need to explore a
concept ‒ Pareto optimality. This concept
is borrowed from economics, and it points
to a state of allocation of resources where
it would be impossible to many any
individual better off without making at
least one individual least worse off. In
simple words ‒ making someone well off
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 should not be at the cost of suffering to
other. Such distribution of resources
would achieve an equilibrium in the
society.
However, even this view suffers from
limitation since it lacks qualitative
perspective behind distribution of
resources.
5. Idea of Justice:
This perspective of public interest tries to
improve upon theory of Justice. In this
approach Dr. Amartya Sen propounds
that the people have certain entitlements
from the state. If the government fails to
do that basic task, it loses legitimacy.
Thus, the government needs to go beyond
mere survival of its citizen. Rather the
government must fulfill certain
obligations towards the citizen to enable
them to enhance their capability. This
approach of ensuring public interest is
known as capabilities approach. In such
environment, the people would slowly
reduce dependency on the government
and would move towards being self-
sufficient and live a life of dignity.
Thus, the public interest here lies in
empowerment of the people. It deals with
enhancing choices at the hand of people.
This approach has undertone of human
rights as well.
Dr. Ambedkarʼs concept of social justice:
“Political justice wonʼt work unless social
justice is not served”
At the base of Justice/ political democracy
lies social democracy and unless social
disparities are removed, there is no
meaning to justice or political democracy.
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His concept of justice revolves around the
most backwards within any political
framework. His approach includes
dismantling exploitative caste system.
Thus, unless the backwards are protected
and affirmative actions are implemented
to bring them in mainstream ‒ public
interest wonʼt be served.
M. Gandhiʼs perspective
Gandhiji propounded the concept of
Sarvodaya and Antyodaya. By Antyodaya
he meant welfare of the weakest of weak
in the society and through such
empowerment create a capable and self-
sufficient society i.e., Sarvodaya or
common good for all.
He Further talked about Suraj, Swaraj and
Swarajya where Suraj implied good
governance, swaraj is about self-
governance, a sense of autonomy and
when suraj and swaraj combines we get
Swarajya ‒ freedom in true sense.
Q: The concept of Public Interest is
necessary to understand the scope of
public Administration. Discuss.
As we have seen public interest in not one entity,
but it is a collage of perspectives, and the
government of the say needs to take into account
numerous factors before reaching determining
what constitutes public interest.
Once a consensus is achieved on what constitutes
public interest, the next course of action is
execution and implementation of policies to
secure the decided public interest. Therefore,
public interest is one crucial factor that
determines scope of public administration.
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Executing the Public Interest.
There is a clear rationale behind functioning of a
democratic government. A government is elected
by the citizen based on promises made by the
political parties in the election manifesto. Then
the chosen government design certain policies
based on its understanding of what would
constitute public interest. E.g., a political party
may promise to impose ban on cow slaughter.
These interests are an outcome of political
processes and therefore they are influenced by
socio-cultural and political values.
From the determination of public interest,
making a policy, implementing that policy and
finally evaluation and course collection in the
policy, the role government determines scope for
the activity, institutions involved in public
administration. This collectively determines
SCOPE of the discipline of public administration.
Thus, scope of public administration is about the
ʻknowledgeʼ of government activities, along with
the ʻknow howʼ i.e., study of those activities in a
scientific manner.

Once a political party gets elected it tries to

execute the promises made during election
campaign. Usually, the political parties make
populous promises in the election. They can later
use the existing provisions from the constitution
to justify their populous promises. For example,
in above policy of ban on cow slaughter, the
government can also cite article 48 from the
constitution.

The government then through administrative *Diagram will be explained it the classroom

machinery tries to implement these policies and

values in the society. For that, it will use In next part you will learn more technical details
administrative apparatus to design a policy, then with respect to meaning, scope and significance
implement this policy and later evaluate the result of public administration.
to make any modification to that policy.

The administrative apparatus includes ‒ funds in

the hands of government (the annual financial
statement or annual budget) the personnel in
government i.e., the civil servants, and other
already existing or new infrastructure.

In this manner a government sustains a society

and hence the civilization. Usually, the approach
of a democratic government is to bring gradual
and progressive changes while maintain stability
in the society. In this endeavor role of public
administration becomes important particularly in
developing country like India.

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