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What is Lok Niti?
"Lok Niti" and "Raj Niti" are terms coined from the Sanskrit by Mahatma
Gandhi. Lok Niti signifies people's politics, the people in command and
direct governance by the sovereign people, as opposed to Raj Niti, the
politics of the nation state or indirect rule by a centralized government
leadership based on current "democratic" forms of party and representative
political institutions. The concept of Lok Niti was the political basis of
Gandhi's socio-economic "Constructive Programme," which is now known in
India as Sarvodaya.
An increasing number of us who are associated with the Asian NGO Coalition
(ANGOC) feel that we have begun to find our bearings in the tangled terrain
of "development" through commitment to the "gentle anarchism" of Mahatma
Gandhi - a body of principles for both personal and social transformation
through work in support of decentralized, village community oriented, rural
development, guided by the ideals of satyagraha and non-violence and
harmonization with both nature and tradition.
Lok Niti as the journal of the Asian NGO Coalition is a very tentative
beginning in the Asian NGO network.
---Chandra de Fonseka, editor-in-chief
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