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Loans from Co-operatives
Besides banks, the other major source of cheap credit in rural areas are the co-operative societies. Members of a co-operative pool their resources for co-operation in certain areas. There are several types of co-operatives possible such as farmers co-operatives, weavers co-operatives,
industrial workers co-operatives etc. Krishak Co-operative functions in a village not very far away from Sonpur. It has 2300 farmers as members. It accepts deposits from its members. With these deposits as collateral, the co- operative has obtained a large loan from the bank. These funds are used to provide loans to members. Once these loans are repaid, another round of lending can take place. Krishak Co-operative provides loans for the purchase of agriculture equipments, loans for cultivation and agricultural trade, fishery loans, loans for constructions of houses and for variety of other expenses.
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New Forms of Publication
By the end of the nineteenth century, a new visual culture was taking shape. With the setting up of an increasing number of printing presses. visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies. Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation. Poor wood gngravers who made woodblocks and were employed by print shops. Cheap prints and calendars, easily available in the bazaar, could be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places of work. These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture. By the 1870s, caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and newspapers, commenting on social and political issues. Some caricatures ridiculed the educated Indians’ fascination with Western tastes and clothes, while others expressed the fear of social change. There were imperial caricatures lampooning nationalists, as well as pationalist cartoons criticising imperial rule.
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Sacred Groves — a wealth of diverse and rare species
‘Nature worship is an age old tribal belicf based on the premisc that all creations of nature have to be protected. Such beliefs have preserved several virgin forests in pristine form called Sacred Groves (the forests of God and Goddesses). These patches of forest or parts of large forests have been left tintouched by the localpeople and any interference with them is banned, Certain socicties revere from time region worship (cadamba) trees. and the tribals (Tamarindus indica) and and Bihar worship the tamarind weddings. To many of us, (Mangifera indica) trees during o o peepal and banyan trees are considered sacred. Cly comprises several cultures, each with its own set of traditional methods of conservion are often nature and its creations.The mountain peaks, plants and animals which around many temples.“I” find troops of macaques. They are fed daily and treated as a part of temple devotees In and around Bishnoi villages in Rajasthan, herds of blackbuck. nilgai and peacocks can be seen as an integral part of the community and nobody harms them.
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The local government structure goes right up to the district level. A few gram panchayats are grouped together to form what is usually called a panchayat samiti or block or mandal. The members of this representative body are elected by all the panchayat members in that arca. All the panchayat samitis or mandals in a district together constitute the zilla (district) parishad. Most members of the zilla parishad are clected. Members of the Lok Sabha and MLAs of that district and some other officials of other district level bodies are also its members. Zilla parishad chairperson is the
political head of the zilla parishad. Similarly, local government bodies exist for urban areas as well. Municipalities are set up in towns. gi.ig cities are .Conslilulcd into municipal corporations. Both municipalities and municipal corporations are controlled by clected bodies consisting of people’s representatives. Municipal chairperson is the political head of the municipality. In a municipal corporation, such an officer is called the mayor. This new system of local government is the largest experiment in democracy conducted anywhere in the world.