Jawaharlal Nehru’s Vision for Citizen-centric Administration

After Independence from the British rule, India adopted a new Constitution in 1950 framed by the Constituent Assembly. Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister, India followed the path of ‘democratic socialism’ to establish the ‘socialistic pattern of society’. Though Nehru started with a new vision and vigour, yet he was left with a traditional administrative machinery inherited from the colonial era. Nehru wanted to overhaul the Indian Civil Service (ICS) machinery to suit the objectives of new India by making it more citizen-centric and more participatory, and constituted the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in its place. This article tries to outline the vision of Nehru for a citizen-centric public administration. The article analyses the role of the Preamble to the Constitution and Nehru’s Objectives Resolution in defining popular moorings and sanctions for public administration. Delineating major colonial inheritances in the administrative machinery, the article in its later part, analyses Nehru’s thoughts on citizen-centric administration, especially focusing on a human touch in Indian public administration.