Sustainable development: Conceptual context and programme of action

Abstract

As a programme for collective course of human action, sustainable development has two broad dimensions: approaches and experiences. This paper belongs mainly to the former domain, though the latter with reference to India is chalked out at the end. An attempt is made to relate the concept to other earlier orientations to change. In the first part of the paper, the concept 'sustainable development' in the epistemological tradition of social science in general and sociology in particular is located. In the later sections the concept is related to the Indian social reality by recalling late Professor I.P. Desai's arguments on "the concept of desired type of society and the problems of social change" with reference to India and briefed a outline of programmes for sustainable development in India.