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Institute for Development and Communication |
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Chandigarh, India
Working together for equitable socio-economic transformation and to build a more humane and just society
The Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, located in North-Western India, is involved in social research aimed at finding a direction between opposing claims of market efficiency, growth and social equity and justice. It is working to promote democratic and accountable governance, citizen safety, rights of vulnerable groups and reach of entitlements by providing practical and people-oriented solutions since 1992. IDC’s Director Pramod Kumar is recipient of the prestigious Homi Bhabha Fellowship award and an expert on religious violence and policing communities under the threat of terrorism. He is also the Chair of Governance Reforms Commission, Punjab, India.
IDC is organized around the domains of Peace, Conflict Resolution and Policing; Gender Studies; and Development and Governance. Its program on Justice and Democratic Governance combines a range of projects, capturing the interactive relationship between multicultural reality and distributive justice. It includes peace building, contextualized in the nature of governance, and programs to strengthen civil society engagement.
The institute focuses on a gamut of issues—religious violence, female feticide, dowry deaths, access to clean water and police-community relations. IDC’s projects often blend research and action. For example, it is currently leading a statewide effort in the Punjab to build public confidence in the police and encourage the use of police services by creating special state centers where residents can report crime and seek other help. The project is an outcome of IDC’s efforts to know what citizens want from law enforcement agencies.
IDC’s trailblazing study, Victims of Militancy, published by UNICEF in 2001, bares the effects of living in a culture defined by militancy and violence and documents the suffering of women and children in the Punjab through the 1980s, while questioning whether they should be considered passive victims.
Its affiliated extension center runs training courses and other programs based on insights generated by IDC’s core projects, providing an avenue to raise issues of strategic gender interest such as institutionalized discrimination in terms of credit, property inheritance and family violence.
For more information about the Institute for Development and Communication, visit the organization’s web site.
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