The Madras High Court has invoked the "parens patriae jurisdiction" to declare Mother Nature as a Living Being with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person, in order to preserve and conserve them.

DEVELOPMENT is about protection of human rights of the concerned populations. It pre-supposes active participation of the populace in the decisionmaking processes while social justice remains one of the most important and cherished goals of development.

The drive for a rapid development in the education of women came largely from a perception summed up aptly in .the following statement by Mayhew: "women