Overview 2: What do you mean by Public Administration?

Before we dive into the real topics in our hand, we must know what is the meaning of Public Administration in laymen terms or crude sense. Then it will be easier for you to understand the formal definition of Public Administration. So, what we know by the term Public Administration? 

Let's see what is the literal Meaning of Public and Administration first. According to Cambridge Dictionary,

Public: relating to or involving people in general And Administraion : the arrangements and tasks needed to control the operation of a plan or organization

So, from the dictionary meaning, we can learn the Public Administration would literally mean "the arrangements and tasks needed to control the operation of plans or anything relating to or involving the people". Hence, we simple understand from our real life examples, any agents or any activity that involve towards the services of the people in general is what we called as public administration. For Example, the District level Officers involving in the developmental activities for the district or the division or the village is an example of the Public Administration.

Now, we will look into another perspective, how Public Administration is different from the Government(which we had learnt in previous post)! 

We learnt that Government is responsible for implementing various laws and other developmental plans or formula laid down by the legislatures. So to facilitate the Government in its activities, the Public Administration represent and performs the tasks of Government in its behalf. Broadly, we can say, Public Administrator includes, bureaucrats, field officers, staffs of various departments or any other agencies responsible for implementing any task e.g., BSNL, Electricity Companies etc.

We can also say that even the roles of elected representatives are included in Public Administration , so does the roles of the Government. In a broader sense, by taking the literal meaning of PA, we can even say that Planing activities or judicial activities or legislative activities etc are all for the well being of the people or the citizens, so we can even say that they are all a part of Public Administration. But in general for the purpose of study/understanding, Public Administration would generally mean those activities or roles perform by these various agents or agencies on behalf of the Government. To name some example, Public Work Department (PWD) engineers performing maintenance or development work of road construction, or District collectors providing OBC certificates may be a simple service but it is an example of Public Administration.

So, this definition is just for understanding the broader picture of Public Administration in Laymen terms. In later posts, we will learn the formal definition and other related topics.