Sanjay Kumar Agrawal

Democracy is a theory of society and not a theory of governance. A democratic government is the product of democratic society and not vice-versa. We may define democracy as the organization of society for liberty and equality, through the spirit of fellowship or fraternity, as well as the right to participate in political decision making. Participation and control of governance by people is the essence of democracy which is a constantly moving dynamic force and which impels us towards a social organisation in which every individual member shall have equal opportunity to develop holistically. Pt. DeenDayalUpadhaya's views on democracy and the role of political party is relevant in contemporary India as it was in past. He wanted to decolonise Indian political thought which was largely as he said, “A western political picture in the Indian background”. He strongly argued against the left-right division as being detrimental to the growth of the constructive, transformative pro-people democracy which is the part of his “Swayambhu philosophy” which contains the celebrated Integral Humanism. He argued that this left-right categorisation does not give a correct idea of politics in India because many programmes of these political parties defy any classification on this orthodox basis. He wanted to wash out this distinction from political parties which hamper the transformation of India into New India in a more democratic fashion. According to him, politics must be controlled by the masses and not by the wealthy. Neo liberalism has challenged democracies to ensure they do not become beholden to corporate interest. DeenDayal cautioned that “if steps are not taken to mend them, powerful lobbies will emerge in the country's legislature and political decision will hardly be taken in an objective manner”. Taking into consideration the welfare of people and promotion of national interest, this paper will focus on the feasibility of practising the concept of Integral Humanism in a democracy, highlighting the importance of it in contemporary issues of policy making and implementation through a more democratic, accountable and participative manner.

Development administration has evolved as a branch of public administration and is primarily concerned with the governments and administration of developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America which emerged after the second world war. It focuses on developing the activities of governments to bring change especially towards achieving progression in social, economic and political fields. Development administration actually puts forward any social or political system and structure on the path of development. It is also concernedwith well organised, integrated and directed efforts of national governments to bring socio-economic progress, welfare and well-being of people at large. To understand development administration, this paper discusses both 'Administration ' and 'Development' which are wide-ranging terms and highlights that the scope of 'development administration' is equally wide. After having analyzed the scope and subject matter of development administration, the objective of development administration is described here.The basic objective of development administration is to understand the administrative problems related to development which in turn creates various impediments in the way of development. These impediments include poverty, illiteracy, population increase, resource crunch, environmental protection, food production, energy crisis, deterioration of human environment, decrease of middle class, absence of national unity, decrease in per capita income etc. Further this paper also indicates various features for success of development administration and its usefulness to bring fruitful and satisfactory results by removing bottlenecks and impediments related to development.

The South China Sea region caters as a political and economic life preserver for the coastal region. It also has important strategic implications and base ground for coastal states to project their specific legitimate claims over oceanic resources. The narrative established by the post-cold war is of a unipolar world leaning highly towards hegemonic American interests, which turned out in rising of various geopolitical powers, those of India, China, and South-East Asian countries like, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. The rise of stakes of these countries in international relations is not just a by-product of American policies but also the product of their individual sovereign endeavours e.g. the rise of Asian tigers is a testimony to this fact. After the liberalisation policies of China and India in 1970s and 1990s respectively, the growth of South-East Asian Nations accelerated in world trade and geopolitics making the Malacca strait and South China Sea (SCS) as strategic rallying point for the powerful contenders of the region. This paper highlights how due to growing energy demands globally and its economic exploitation leads to the rise of the chances of strife among the surrounding coastal nations. The surrounding region is the main navigation route of heavily transported and largely populated area of South Asia and South East Asia. All these factors accumulated in the hegemonic interest of China were overtly protected by its cheque book diplomacy (financing Hambantota port-Sri Lanka, Gwadar port-Pakistan, One Belt, One Road strategy) to protect its economic and strategic national interests. Presence of America in Japan and South Korea is seen as a counter balancing force for China, however post 2008 subprime crises that gave economic shocks to America created economic gap in aiding these countries to tackle China. Hence it became the pivot to America's Asia Strategy to tackle China by combining efforts of contending nations of Indo-Pacific region (Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand)-the Quad to offer a united front against China. Further various issues pertaining to South China Sea dispute and challenges in the Indian Ocean region is dealt with. It also pertains to Chinese assertion on Indian Ocean under the garb of protecting it from piracy and oil spill disaster is frequently creating its rivalry with India; its military base in Djibouti is another reason for IndoChinese rivalry, which has its roots in India's interest in South China Sea, which is the main topic of discussion here. The paper also covers South China Sea in India's 'Act East Policy' as how India's long-standing Look East Policy is transformed into more assertive Act East Policy in the region.

Several fields in social sciences such as Public Administration are characterised by the diversity of approaches to study the phenomena critical to their disciplinary foci. Understanding the complexity of the subject of public administration and political process in real terms is not an easy task. For that, it needs to be studied from all possible methodological and analytical frameworks to get proper insight of its problems in order to bring suitable solutions. Accordingly, with a perspective to study the multiplicity of dimensions of a subject critically and realistically, the diversity of methods along with techniques and approaches (traditional, modern and contemporary) were evolved over a period of time. These differing approaches, over the years, also reflect the changing priorities, value systems and conceptual innovations that go into the constant reinvention of the discipline. As such, approaches are the methods of investigation and critical examination of the evolution, themes, foci and overall structure of a subject. That way, the major approaches to the study of public administration are classified into three main categories of traditional, modern and contemporary approaches. Initially, the first two approaches were quite helpful in the study of the subject when it was in the stage of infancy and there was not much of complexity and inter-disciplinarity in it. However, as and as the fields of enquiries started becoming wide-ranging, complex and interdisciplinary in nature, the traditional and modern approaches were faced with their inherent limitations, giving way to the contemporary approaches. Accordingly, in this paper a detailed account of the contemporary theoretical explorations in the emerging trends in Public Administration is provided. Amongst the contemporary theoretical explorations in the emerging trends in Public Administration, development management and new public service stand out prominently as conceptual categories. This paper covers two significant theoretical constructs of Development Management and NPS which represent important landmarks in the post-New Public Management phase of the theoretical progression of Public Administration as a discipline. However, the ideological locale as well as the functional objective of the two stand in sharp contrast to each other. Indeed, development management and NPS have been able to set new trends in understanding the institutional machinery as well as functional dynamism of public administration in current times.