This paper looks at one of the most important conditions that defines democracy as a system of self-governance. This condition is that all individuals in a society must have the right to communicate freely with any other individual or group of individuals in the society. A substantial part of...

The river Balasan near Siliguri carries the natural resources like stone, sand, boulders. People live on the riverside and are involved in work like collection of stones and sand, crushing the stones into different shapes and sizes and loading them into vehicles. These raw materials are...

On November 28, 2003, roughly 300 grassroots activists, people affected by large dams and representatives from NGOs gathered in a small village in Rasi Salai district in Northeast Thailand. They met for a five-day conference on large dams under the rallying cry of “Rivers for Life.â€As...

This paper aims to bring out the need to incorporate cultural sensitivity to ensure the principle of essentiality in research processes while undertaking research among tribal populations. The authors establish the difference in the outcome of obtaining consent between tribal and other...

This paper maps the organizational diversity of the NGO sector in Karnataka, a “middle order state†(Vyasulu, 1995), and demonstrates that conceptualizing NGO actions vis-à-vis the state dichotomously–either as a close collaboration or as a conflictual, oppositional force–is...

As society develops, it is important to keep ethical problems under continuing scrutiny and debate. It should also be recognized that a productive balance is between society’s need for knowledge and its member’s need for protection against intrusion, inconvenience, or discomfort....