Civil Service Management and Administrative Systems in South Asia / edited by Ishtiaq Jamil, Steinar Askvik, Tek Nath Dhakal.

Chapter One: Introduction: Understanding Civil Service in South Asia, Ishtiaq Jamil, Tek Nath Dhakal and Narendra Raj Paudel
Chapter Two: The Civil Service System in Bhutan, Dhurba Rizal
Chapter Three: The Civil Service System of Bangladesh, Sk. Tawfique M. Haque and M. Mahfuzul Haque
Chapter Four: Civil Service Management in India, Namrata Singh
Chapter Five: Civil Service Management in Nepal, Shree Krishna Shrestha and Narendra Raj Paudel
Chapter Six: The Promise of Representative Bureaucracy and Citizen's Trust in the Civil Service in Nepal, Ishtiaq Jamil
Chapter Seven: Civil Service Reforms in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Progress So Far, Implementation Barriers and Challenges, Imtiaz Badshah and Konstantin Timoshenko
Chapter Eight: The New Statutory Civil Service in the Maldives: Towards a Decentralized Human Resource Management Model? Mohamed Faizal and Rob Laking
Chapter Nine: Public Administration in Sri Lanka: An Analysis of Evolution, Trends and Challenges in Personnel Management, Renuka Priyantha, Ranjith Dickwella and Ravindra Gunasekara
Chapter Ten: The Administrative System in Bangladesh: Reform Initiatives with Failed Outcomes, Pranab Kumar Panday
Chapter Eleven: Reforms in the Administrative System of Nepal, Bharat Gautam
Chapter Twelve: The Local Administrative System in India, Jitendra G. Wasnik
Chapter Thirteen: Public Administration in Sri Lanka: An Inquiry into Structure, Reforms, and Management, K. Liyanage, R. Ramesh and N. Sivakumar
Chapter Fourteen: The Development of Public Administration in the People's Republic of China: An Analysis of Administrative Reform, S. Baskaran and Mr. M.M. Ihjas

The pursuit for better governance has assumed center stage in developmental discourse as well as reform initiatives of all organizations working for the public welfare, and includes such issues as service delivery and responding to citizens’ needs and demands. In the era of globalization, multilevel and new modes of governance are changing the traditional governance models of nation states, accelerated by technological innovation, rising citizen expectation, policy intervention from international and multilateral donor communities, and the hegemony of western ideology imposed on many developing nations. However, a universally accepted and agreed upon definition of 'governance’ still remains elusive. There is no consensus or agreement as to what would be the nature and form of governance and public administration. The question that is raised: Is there a universal governance mechanism that fits in all contexts or governance mechanisms should be based on home grown ideas?One can see various programs and policies of reforms and reorganizations in public administration in the developing countries, but these efforts have not been effective to address the challenging issues of economic development, employment generation, poverty reduction, ensuring equality of access to public services, maintaining fairness and equity, security and safety of citizens, social cohesion, democratic institution building, ensuring broader participation in the decision making process, and improving the quality of life. Therefore, there is a widespread concern for better governance or sound governance to bridge the gap between theory and practice, making this book of interest to academics as well as policy-makers in global public administration.