Social Harmony

Role of local self governments in promoting social harmony

What is Social Harmony?

Social harmony comprises of two very broadly defined terms, social i.e. in relation to a group of individuals living together in a society, and harmony i.e. peaceful interaction and coexistence, coming together of various parts to form an interconnected whole. In this sense, an all encompassing, though very loose, definition of social harmony would be a state where everyone in the society gets along irrespective of differences of age, gender and sexual orientation, race, religion, class (social and economic status), caste, creed and culture. Social harmony is therefore a function of multiple factors’ parity.

As a concept, social harmony can be understood to represent

This is to say, that almost all the aspects which one ought not to focus on, while interacting with or forming relations with other members of the society or community, are not only present, but are very much an integral part of thought process (prejudice) and action (discrimination). “Prejudice is the thought, discrimination is the act.” For example, in deciding to employ someone in a farm, the owner is likely to have a prejudice against the elderly and is therefore very likely to discriminate; or in a household in a rural area with limited income there are very high chances of the education and well being of a girl being neglected in order to have resources disposable for a boy. Now, at national level, there can be laws against discrimination or policies for enabling education of a girl child, but the discord in priorities is at a level where monitoring and facilitation becomes a tough task but for the presence of local authorities. The need to bring harmony in society starts at, say, the level of ‘family’ units itself. And LSGs are one of the best available mechanisms to ensure the same. The implementation of various policies meant to bring about a change in attitudes/ actions of individuals is much better, if done by LSGs because of the short power distance between the individual and LSG authorities. Also, more often than not, these officials are people from within the community and so they are privy to the concerns. This enables better understanding, faster actions and relatively easy management control of the concerns and their respective solutions devised via broad policies and