Social harmony is the ideal to which a state aspires in the modern democratic times and is an important constituent, if not prerequisite, to the social welfare of the people of the state.
As a concept, social harmony can be understood to represent the “Socialist Harmonious Society” envisaged by the Chinese leader Hu Jintao which aimed at reducing the social inequality and bringing stability even at the cost of economic growth. This concept came into being as a tool to deal with the widening wealth gap and social injustice which would have otherwise threatened the political stability. In this context, for a country like India, with heterogeneity and variance existing in every possible form, social harmony becomes even more important to preserve …show more content…
Social harmony breeds at this level as do the elements against it. Pragmatically designed programmes implemented at the lower most level of administration for the grassroots can thus lay the important foundation of bringing about concord and pruning the anti-social elements. The direction can be given by the leadership at the top but the design-as-per-demand and implementation-as-per-need can be done effectively only by the LSGs by ensuring the participation of people from grassroots in the democratic procedures. This idea has been very well encapsulated in a quote by Lord Bryce, “The best school for democracy and the best guarantee for its success in the practice of Local Self