ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the reforms and the Indian discourse about them and puts this within the broader context of the various phases of the evolutionary development of the Indian political system in the last 65 years since Independence in 1947. It discusses the foundational challenge in adapting the bureaucratic apparatus of the colonial state to the new parliamentary-federal republic established under the 1950 Constitution of India. The chapter also discusses the recommendations of the Administrative Reforms Commission-I relating to the administrative structures at the state and district levels. Independent India faced the challenge of deciding what to do with the legacy of the British administrative inheritance. The principal challenge of administrative reforms faced by independent India was to reorient the bureaucratic apparatus to the tasks of adapting it to a parliamentary-federal constitution and undertaking the responsibilities of promoting electoral democracy and economic development with justice and equity.
