Governance and Administration in South Asia

Abstract

Mapping the political and administrative history of South Asia since independence over a period of fifty years is indeed a difficult exercise. At the time of independence, the divided old British India was faced overnight with the movement of millions of refugees, perhaps the largest exodus of people at any one time anywhere on the earth. This posed the problem not only of relief and rehabilitation, but also of welding the various communities divided by language, culture, religion, caste and creed into the working cohesion of two single yet separate unions. There was an immediate confrontation between them in October 1947 that only added to the perennial problems of economic disaster, inflation and food shortage. Each one of the problems not only had implications for politics and policy, but also for administration. This indeed was a monumental task for the two nations. These problems put the inherited and emergent administrative structure and governing process to a severe test.¹ Over the years, there have been changes in administrative institutions, structures, styles and cultures in post-independence India and Pakistan, the two major countries of the region; however, administrative development has been an uneven process which can be best understood only in the context of the totality of this region’s politico-administrative environment.