Given that the economic development, accelerated by the expanding base of higher education may lead to the reduction of other kinds of disparities—social, regional, political—its contribution in stabilizing our civil society at this juncture of volatility cannot be underestimated which in turn may help the process of speedy national development further. The book raises all such issues. The insight of ‘university administration and systems in India’ is considered the most common issue for all the stakeholders engaged in higher education especially at post-graduate level and the readers have to wonder for authentic source of literature to understand the same. This predicament of interested readers particularly requires instantaneous efforts on the part of academe. The present book is an endeavour to put a match to the expectations of those readers particularly teachers, students and policymakers who are peripatetic for evocative lone text on the subject matters. The book includes thirty-three chapters. The basic concepts have been elucidated with suitable illustrations for covering the underlying spirit on the subject. All the chapters have been deliberated by the scholars into an uninterrupted sequence and all conceptual details provided in this text are in self-instructional mode. It is expected that the readers would find this book quite valuable and receptive.

Demand for quality higher education, is continuing to outpace the supply due to growing population of young people, gains in school education, growing middle class and their rising aspirations. At the same time, the country has a unique opportunity to convert this demographic surplus to its economic strength by providing its young people the right kind of skills. Thus, higher education now occupies a central position in the country's strategy for global competitiveness and inclusive growth. Steps have been initiated to augment supply, improve quality and fix problems. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has made several useful and important recommendations and the government has significantly increased funding during the Eleventh Five Year Plan. In the backdrop of these developments, Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future, describes the Indian higher education landscape. The author spells out the needs, identifies the gaps, and based on the lessons learnt from the experiences of other countries provides perspectives to shape its future.

The book analyses various challenges emanating from privatization, globalization and public financial crunch to understand the future directions of higher education in India. The book presents a careful understanding of structure, finance and governance of higher education and advocates a new way to look at increasing the capability of students to secure their future. Attention has also been drawn to the inequalities prevailing in the system of higher education and pursuing inclusive approach so as to have sufficient employment opportunities for students in the labour market. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the future in terms of university structure and functions, Part 2 deals with the future of financing higher education and Part 3 deals with capabilities required by teachers for the future of universities. It is an interesting collection of various themes in different chapters which are authored by serious researchers. All policy makers, university administrators and teachers and researchers of higher education interested in governance, financing, teaching as well as research in the area of higher education will find the contents of the book relevant. The book will benefit in understanding the challenges of higher education and help remodel the future of higher education in India.

Learning has been an integral part of Indian Traditions since the times immemorial.1 The history of University education in India dates long back in the ancient times even before the establishment of universities and colleges in Europe during the medieval age. Higher education in India which is essentially founded on Macaulay's ideas has achieved a tremendous quantitative growth over the period since the inception of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras University in 1857.

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.

Ever since a democratic system of government was adopted and a strategy of planned economic development was launched in India, the planners were quite conscious of the need for an administrative system different from the colonial one to implement the planned objective of development. Kuldeep Mathur, in this volume, examines these administrative reforms and provides a magisterial account of the changes in the institutional process of public administration. The introduction of neoliberal policies revived concerns about reform and change, thereby giving rise to a new vocabulary in the discourse of public administration. The conventional world of public administration was now expected to adopt management practices of the private sector and interact with it to achieve public policy goals. New institutions are now being layered on traditional ones, and India is becoming a recipient of managerial ideas whose efficacy has yet to be tested on Indian soil. In light of the aforementioned changes, this volume argues that hybrid architecture for delivering public goods and services has been the most significant transformation to be institutionalized in the current era and critiques the neoliberal transformation from within a mainstream public administration perspective.