Role of public administration in modernization and social change are given below:
Image Source: gdb.rferl.org
The administrative system in the developing society does not concern with all segments of society and is often confronted with pressures and counter pressures of differing priorities, conflicting tactics, and a conglomeration of demands.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It has to function in social milieu and is acted upon by other social institutions. In fact, public administration has to remove the public feeling of distrust initiate a process of political socialisation as already started and facilitate planning of strategies and identification of the people with the goals.
However, the test of administrative System is the extent to which it represents the needs and values of the different sectors of society and acts as an instrument of social change.
To be more specific, it is to involve in the social, economic, scientific and technological changes in the society a round it, because development is a process of overall change of the society under mainly state directed and planned effort.
Efficiency in administration may be desirable, but what is more important is the development of administrative culture, based on flexibility, freedom and change of traditional forms and techniques when they are found unsuited and which recognizes public interest as the supreme end of democratic government and administration.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In some of the developing countries, public administration has to bring about a social revolution to free the people from the clutches of class ridden society and to make the system socially mobile.
The administrative system has to act as a dynamic force follows the will of the people as well as leads it. As Waldo puts, it is apart of the cultural complex and it is not only acted upon, but also acts. The burden of bringing about planned social change is on, public administration and if it fails, the dreadful alternative is violent revolution.
In the social sector, modernization process must take into account the difficult task of inculcation of rational values, building up dynamic group attitudes, creating and channelizing along constructive lines, citizen responses to absorb change and accelerate its pace. Education in the present day world does not end in the classroom.
Apart from proper organisation of an educational system, the administration has to plan to provide for an immense variety of instruction and health entertainment and wide opportunity for cultivation of the spirit, the mind and the body, which is necessary for a stable and contended social life and the maximum development of their personalities by the citizens.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Again civil service has to increasingly concern itself with the social conditions and deal with policies relating to helpless and handicapped sections of the community, like the untouchable, women and children. To crown all, even the question of family-planning falls within its ambit.