Introduction

In the past 40 years Gana Unnayan Parshad made a sincere effort to reach out the poorest of the poor with a view to improve the quality of their lives by initiating the process of sustainable development. Starting from a small beginning in the state of West Bengal it has been successful to spread out its development tentacles across the states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Sikkim and Madhya Pradesh by itself as well as through the network of small and medium size NGOs/ POs/CBOs, many of which were promoted by GUP itself, during this reference period. Some of these organisations have become much bigger than our expectation through the passage of time.
Under this perspective GUP is trying its best to make people self-reliant through the idea of “ Khadi” and People’s Action Groups by judicious utilization of resources, both natural and human, in respective micro-eco region. While we are very much aware of the problems and constraints of this uphill ask, we are also confident enough to reach the goal of sustainable development of people through “ Khadi” concept which is according to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru the livery of India’s freedom”.