Public Administration in South Asia ─ India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan

A state-of-the-art, one-stop resource, Public Administration in South Asia: India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan examines public administration issues and advances in the Indian subcontinent. The book fulfills a critical need. These nations have the largest public administration programs in South Asia, yet existing knowledge on them is fragmented at best. Bringing together leading scholars from these countries, this book provides both an insider perspective and a scholarly look at the challenges and accomplishments in the region.

Focusing on the machinery of government, the book explores questions such as:

• What is the history of public administration development?
• How are major decisions made in the agencies?
• Why are anti-corruption efforts so much a challenge?
• What is the significance of intergovernmental relations?
• What is the success of administrative reform?
• What are examples of successful social development programs?
• How successful is e-government, and what are its challenges?
• Why is civil service reform difficult to achieve?
• How is freedom of information being used as a means to combat corruption and invoke grassroots activism?
• What can be learned from the successes and failures?

While public administration practice and education have become considerably professionalized in the last decade, a sufficiently in-depth and well-rounded reference on public administration in these countries is sorely lacking. Most available books tackle only aspects of public administration such as administrative reforms, civil service, economic developments, or public policy, and are country specific. None provide the in-depth analysis of the sphere of public action in South Asia found in this book. It supplies an understanding of how public administration can be either the source of, or solution to, so many of the problems and achievements in the Indian subcontinent.

Meghna Sabharwal is an Assistant Professor in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas where she teaches human resource management. Her research interests are focused on workforce policy as it relates to job satisfaction, productivity, and diversity. Her expertise lies in studying these issues with special attention to the scientific enterprise of the United States. Her work is published or forthcoming in academic journals such as Public Administration, Review of Public Personnel Administration, The Social Science Journal, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, Government Information Quarterly, and Research in Higher Education. Her book chapter about gender differences in scholarly productivity of faculty in public administration and policy will be published in late 2010. She received her doctorate in public administration from Arizona State University, and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the City College of New York, City University of New York before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Evan M. Berman is university chair professor at the National Chengchi University (Taipei, Taiwan) Doctoral Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, and the Department of Public Administration. He is recognized among the most productive scholars of his generation. He is also the editor-in-chief of the American Society for Public Administration's (ASPA) book series in public administration and public policy (Taylor & Francis) and senior editor of Public Performance & Management Review. His areas of interest are public administration performance, human relations and motivation, and emerging forms of governance. He has published in the leading journals of the discipline. He is also editor-in-chief of the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy (2007). Before joining NCCU, he was the Huey McElveen Distinguished Professor at Louisiana State University, past recipient of a Distinguished Fulbright Scholarship at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), and taught at the University of Central Florida (Orlando) and the University of Miami. He has previously served as a policy analyst for the National Science Foundation and as a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences and U.S. Congress.