Instruments of Change For the change to occur, it is important to determine what type of instrument people will require in commensurate

to its object. So far, what have been dished out; it needs a critical study in view of the past experiences. Mere claims on their behalf can be as misleading as spurious examination based on borrowed knowledge. Here, critical study of the essential characteristics such forces carry, methodology they follow and cultural-moral-ethical milieu they represent will help in the main to determine grain from chaff. So far others have done this for them. Now it is to be done by the people themselves to avoid disaster. Need of a formal Organisation? The primary agenda before the society today leads us to probe then what are the forces of social change that help or debar the process. There are many claims, which need careful scrutiny in the context of past experiences and close study of the phenomenon. The question of prime importance to consider, however, in relation to the object of social change, boils down as to which social formation can provide space where man or woman can flower best. Any skewed understanding on this question may mar or help advance the cause for such a change. Communist practitioners have faulted on this account too, at least in case of India. It deserves that the issue is studied afresh. At present apart from the family in a setting of neighbourhood community, there is felt a need for some sort of formal organisation to help the masses in their endeavour to gain supremacy in social management. There is a claim that political parties have the first place in society to function as instruments of struggle on behalf of the people and to effect social change. To be true, it is a matter of study. If the claim is valid, accept it. If the claim is spurious, it deserves speedy burial. Other Organisations Apart from political parties, there is another claim from other formal type of social organisations of varied colours and costumes. Many of them say that their object is to serve the masses in distress. However, tragedy is that they have nothing original about them. They are also largely patterned on political parties in style and conduct. Their tone is largely messianic and paternalistic and for some patron-like towards people. Their conduct also results in withering away the initiative and a damper on the creativity of the people. Such organisations also have worked virtually to disable the institution of family and neighbourhood community as viable formations for the people. On these two basic accounts alone those patterns of social organisations have to be discarded. We have fought the concept of political parties as an anti-people growth in society brought up by crafty machinations of minority rule. The damage done by this mechanism to the initiative and social activism of masses so essential for a healthy growth of human values is stupendous in history. Likewise, all formal organisations also brought up to answer the growing complexities of life, more so when natural social formations in family and its face-to-face community are banished craftily, do have serious limitations. If society is to grow in its natural course there is a need for informal institutions like family and its community. These basic institutions of society have to be resurrected to provide a healthy growth of human relations. There is little doubt that common masses can do much and do without political parties altogether. Time has come to shun these political parties on whose physical and moral support these happen to survive, though to act against their very interests. In addition, there has to be a serious effort to limit the scope and sweep of other formal organisations also to keep these under leash and within a well-defined frame of an obligation.

Commoners are living under very difficult times for honourable survival. Moreover, they cannot stoop low merely for animal survival. Human dignity is an attribute we can hardly barter. For this incessant struggle against formidable adverse forces, till family and its community get resurrected into an active social force of adequate potential, it is difficult to dispense with some kind of formal organisations of the people. A type foremost among such organisations has to answer these five basic functions, namely: (1) Resurrection of family and its community into active organism again (2) Release mass initiative and activism of the masses for a fundamental change in social and production relations, (3) Working to limit the sweep and scope of state structure day-by-day and hour-by-hour (4) Assert the natural rights of citizens, struggle against deprivation and injustice (5) Help create awareness among people for better life values and organisation Naturally, the practice, methodology and cultural-moral-ethical categories of such an organisation have to be strictly in accordance with these above listed basic functions, and where human dignity and equity have a fair scope to flower. With these parameters, scrutiny will be easier. Realising the primacy of family and its neighbourhood community as informal formation of man in society such an organisation must seek to function in tandem with, and not in contradiction to Gram Sansad in furtherance of its object. Otherwise, the power is bound to slip away in align hands, as has been the history so far of such attempts to effect change in society, including the last effort in former socialist camp.