It does not take the insight of a Shakespeare to know that our nation suffers from a long list of ailments, each of which is sufficient to debilitate its entire body politic. Stark poverty, illiteracy and deprivation exist side by side with ostentation and runaway consumption; massive resource destruction and environmental degradation are compounded by narrow self-interest and corruption; endemic social and economic alienation leads increasingly to violence, crime and terrorism. And all these diseases are on the increase, both in their virulence and their spread.

Yet, it is equally obvious that there must be interests opposing any change in the systems that are at the root of these problems – else they would surely have been dealt with by now. If there is a difference between top leaders and lowliest peasants, it lies mainly in their respective stakes in perpetuating the current state of affairs.

The solutions require fundamental changes on many fronts. They involve the introduction of alternative technologies, alternative resource management methods – and alternative institutions and policies to enable these changes to take place. Over the past couple of decades, Development Alternatives has sought to elucidate the nature of the changes needed and to identify and design the alternatives that would bring them about.

This issue of the Newsletter addresses specifically some of the policy and institutional changes we need and the instruments of advocacy that can make them happen. It presents some of the recent work carried out by People First, the advocacy wing of the Development Alternatives Group.

The changes needed to challenge the status quo will directly threaten the interests that benefit from the present systems of governance – which includes almost everyone who is relatively well off or in a position of power. The opposition to change is therefore strong and rock solid. It is also smart. It never argues with the desirability of the ends to be achieved, but more cleverly undermines any means or strategies proposed with labels such as he "ineffective", "unrealistic" or "utopian".

And the poor, for whose ostensible benefit all the present policies have been put in place, continue to suffer the most.

Regarding democracy, Auronindo was of the view that: "The Village is the cell of the national body and the cell life must be healthy for the body to be developed. Swaraj begins with the village. Both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duty regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy"

Most Indian social thinkers of the period, such as Vivekanand, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Subhash Chandra Bose and Gandhi, voiced similar sentiments. All were ignored and an alien exploitative polity imposed.

To enable real, substantial change to take place in society, involvement of people and interchange of ideas is essential. Creative dialogue and active debate are the anvils on which the broad consensus of a "new" or "third" way must be hammered out. It is the aim of the Development Alternatives Group to generate, protect and nurture such a debate, no matter how unfamiliar, inconvenient or unpalatable the ideas it churns over.