Professor Gerald Caiden defines “administrative reforms” as “artificial inducement of administrative transformation against resistance.” Similarly Professor Mosher prefers the term “reorganising to reforms” which he describes as a “conscious, deliberate, intended and planned organizational change.”
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In the early years of post-independence period it was felt that the “existing administrative machinery was not capable of undertaking the responsibility for “development”. This apprehension gave birth to a feeling of “administrative lag”.
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We all know that with independence, the police state was intended to be transformed into an administrative state or a welfare state. It not only implied undertaking of new welfare functions by an independent Indian government but pursuing largely general development activities.
Functionally, the administrative system took up a vast array of new tasks, largely as a result of design but partly also out of accident. The administrative expansion occurred both in the traditional areas and in new ones what may be called developmental and promotional activities, on the other hand, fall in the second category.
In every country administrative reforms become due to the changing social, economic and technological environment.
The low progress of the Five Year Plan, the inadequate scale of achievement of the objectives which were formulated as basic to the economy of the country and the gaps between promise and performance set of the Government of India thinking about the possible causes which were responsible for all this.
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Perhaps the administrative apparatus may not have been adequate enough, sufficiently alert and vital, or even fully mentally conditioned to the requirements of executing a massive programme for effecting a sea-change in our country.
The Government of India in January 1966, appointed the Administrative Reforms Commission under the chairmanship of Sh. Morarji Bhai Desai to examine the public administration of this country and to make recommendations for reforms and reorganisation with a view to ensuring the highest standards of efficiency and integrity in the Public Services and for making public administration a fit instrument for carrying out the social and economic policies of the government.
The Commission submitted two interim reports during the years 1966 and 1967, one relating to the Problems of Redressal of Citizen’s Grievances and the other on the Machinery for Planning. In 1967, Shri Morarji Bhai Desai became the Deputy Prime Minister of India. Shri K. Hanurnanthaiya was appointed Chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission. Since then the Commission had submitted 18 reports.