India's demographic structure in terms of rural urban population is undergoing a rapid change. The size of urban population and the number of cities and townships are on the increase and so is the case with regard to the problems and challenges faced by our urban territories giving rise to the complexities of governance. Population explosion on the one hand and the issues of crumbling infrastructure, lack of basic amenities, unemployment and poverty, solid waste management, pollution, water, sanitation, health etc. on the other have attracted the attention of not only the political class but also of the academics, planners, researchers and social activists all over the world. The cities, it is said, are becoming problematic, exclusive and ungovernable in India too. The government of India brought 74th amendment to the Indian constitution so as to enable the urban local bodies to function as local self government in order to ensure effective, efficient, responsive, participative and corruption free government to the people at the grassroots level. The state governments have also initiated, accordingly, structural, functional and programmatic measures to improve urban government and governance. The present volume is primarily of based on the proceedings of national seminar attempt to examine and analyse these central and state level initiatives sponsored by the UGC in November 2006 and is an aiming at improving the life conditions of the urban inhabitants in terms of their efficacy and impact. It is an incisive analysis of the Theory and Practice of Urban Governance. The book should be of immense value and reference for the teachers and researchers of urban local administration in colleges and universities as well as provide inputs for urban development policies and decision making in future mechanism of urban governance.
About the Author
Rajvir Sharma is a Reader in the Postgraduate Department of Political Science in ARSD College, University of Delhi, Delhi. He is known as a keen researcher and eminent teacher of Public Administration. Urban Governance, Indian Administration, Indian Government and Politics, Good Governance, Law and order Administration, Judicial Activism and Governance and women Empowerment are his major areas of interest. He has more than two dozen research papers to his credit which are published in national and international journals and reference books of repute. He has widely traveled across the country and abroad and presented papers at nearly a dozen of national and international conferences and seminars. Dr. Sharma was awarded prestigious senior fellowship of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and also the capital foundation society of India award for significant contribution to teaching and Research in the field of Public Administration. He has been a part of cooperative teaching at the department of Political Science, University of Delhi during 1980s and 1990s besides being a member of Academic Council and executive council and a number of Committees of the University of Delhi. Dr. Sharma has been an invited faculty at various national and international universities and training and research institution Like Loyola University, Chicago, Center of Advanced Studies and Institute of Indology, University of Leipzi, and Peace Research Institute Fransfurt, Germany and at the Academic Staff Colleges of the University of Allahabad, CCS University Meerut, HP University of Allahabad, CCS University Meerut, HP University Shimla, IIPA New Delhi, Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, New Delhi and various other training institutions in India. He has also been a member of Board of Research Studies in the Department of Public Administration, M.D. University, Rohtak besides being a member of the advisory committee of the Academic Staff College, Burdhwan University, West Bengal. He has been a visiting fellow to Mizoram Central University, Aizowl.
