Category: Design

The flood in Assam is such a regular feature that today hardly anyone takes a serious note of it. The state of Assam is frequently ravaged by the fury of mighty Brahmaputra and its tributaries causing untold human misery and devastation of indescribable nature. The issue calls for a permanent solution to this problem, if the state wishes to leap forward in all round development.Several factors are responsible for the recurrence of flood in Assam. First and foremost, Assam lies in the heart of Monsoon belt and so gets an overabundance of rain. The Brahmaputra originates in Mansorovar in Tibet and rushes through the middle of the state from east to west. The 2900 km long river and its numerous tributaries such as, Subansiri, Manas, Gadadhar, Sonkosh, Dhansiri, Kopili, Krishnai…

Questionnaires and schedules are very much used in gathering a variety of data.They have been used for the collection of personal preferences, social beliefs, attitudes, opinions, behaviour patterns, group practices, habits and other kinds of data. ADVERTISEMENTS: The increasing use of schedules and questionnaires is probably due to increased emphasis by social scientists on quantitative measure­ment of uniformly accumulated data.A questionnaire is a tool for data collection. It consists of a number of questions printed or typed in a definite order on a form or a set of forms. It is administered to a respondent either person­ally or through mail. The respondent answers the questions on his own without being aided. Image Source: phillj.files.wordpress.comQuestionnaires are now widely used collecting data, particularly when data are to be collected from a large…

We have discussed the meaning and definitions of social structure in the preceding pages. Sociologists have worked on social structure quite elaborately. They prefer to use term ‘social system’ instead of ‘social structure’. However, both sociologists and social anthropolo­gists define social structure in terms of the interrelations between the individuals and functioning of these ordered interrelationships in the maintenance of the society. The definitions given by various social an­thropologists help us to bring out certain characteristics of social structure. We enumerate these as under: ADVERTISEMENTS: (i) Abstraction of empirical reality: Empirical reality has a large number of details about the functioning of society. The construction of social structure removes unnecessary details and brings out abstractions. For instance, there are innumer­able caste and tribal groups in India. Each caste has its…

The continuous flow of people from villages to cities creates many socio­economic problems. The density of population in cities shoots up and civic amenities fall short of requirements. The law and order situation deteriorates. Prices of essential commodities touch the sky. The housing situation becomes so acute that many people are forced to live in slums or sleep on pavements. The rents of houses soar. All this leads to the creation of slums. Sometimes, these slums come up right in the midst of posh colonies.According to 2001 census data, there are 607 towns with slums and the population living in slums is estimated to be 40,297,341. Rapid urbanisation and worsening poverty globally have helped slum population to shoot upto 923 million at the turn of the century according to the…