

	h	Dedication
	h	Invocation: To a Friend Most True
	h	Main Proposals, in Brief
	h	Planning and Preparing the Plan
	h	We, the People of Chandor, Direct Our Panchayat to...
	h	The First Step
	h	The Five-Year People�s Plan
	h	A Little Gandhigiri
	h	The Challenges Before Us
	h	Signs of Hope
	h	Quite a Charmer, Chandor! Our Village, Our Home!
	h	Giving the Economy a Little Push
	h	Let�s Use All the Power We Have!
	h	Work We Need to Take Up Immediately � Let�s Begin?
	h	Vaddo View
	h	What We Need � and Demand! � Immediately!
	h	Let�s Improve Things Around Here
	h	Targets for the Village Panchayat

The Five-Year People's Plan

The process of writing out the Five-year People�s Plan for the Sustainable Development of Chandor (2007-2012) gives all of us the opportunity to ask fundamental questions about our lives in this village. Are we happy living the way we do now? Does Chandor�s physical environment and living spaces promote a healthy, stress-free life for our children and us? Are all the conditions present that can ensure that our lives will continue to flourish and shine? Are the institutions which play such a big influence on our lives locally � the school, the panchayat, the communidades, the fabrica � performing optimally and in our best interests? Are we happy with each other as members of a small, loving community?

If the answer to most of these queries is No, it seems that we have a lot of work ahead of us to try to change things for the better. A discontented life is a life not worth living. A development plan is usually a statement of an intention to create physical and institutional infrastructure that will meet the varied economic and social needs of people living in a particular place. It is also an attempt to predict and shape the future, implying that all of us have some control over our lives and our environment. The question we need to pose to ourselves, therefore, is: How can we influence development in Chandor in a way that considerably enriches our lives?

In other words, can we lay the foundation now for a new social and economic arrangement which will bring about such a transformation in our lives that five years from now we will be amazed at the daring of our dreams and the work we put in to make them come true?

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