Driven by a desire to lead full lives, live as members of a group doing things for themselves, their fellow beings and for the community as well, a handful of academicians, visionaries and professionals of North Balasore at Baliapal dewombed ARM unto the limelight in the 8th of March, 1989. Construed to extend a helping hand to the suffering mass against recurrent vagaries of nature (flood & cyclone) in the coastal district; the arms of ARM have been engaged since then in the empowerment and mainstreaming of socio-economically marginalized and vulnerable rural sections by viewing development as a process of increasing the personal and institutional capacities of members to mobilize and manage resources to produce sustainable and justly distributed improvement in their quality of life consistent with their own aspirations. Alternative for Rural Movement (ARM) has been registered as a voluntary development organization under the Society Registration Act XXI of 1860, Income Tax Act 12 A & Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 1976 and organized till date over 300 Women Self Help Groups (WSGs) across 100 remote rural villages in 16 Gram Panchayats serving a population of 1, 18,748 (21376 families) of Balasore district in the state of Orissa (India).

It was thus felt that modernization concepts with large scale development programmes where a ‘trickle down’ effect was hoped for, but rarely achieved through ‘top-down’ planning strategies should be superceded by more poverty oriented ,participatory development concepts through small scale programmes and ‘bottom up’ planning procedures. ARM has since then been trying to project & implement a people centred development vision that looks to justice, sustainability and inclusiveness as the principles of authentic development.

ARM views development as a people’s movement, rather than as  foreign funded/ Government projects and enables people to develop themselves with the minimum available resources and maximum incorporation of prevailing administrative opportunities within the existing infrastructure .Thus the three basic ingredients of popular participation as identified by ARM team of development harbingers towards a sustainable social order include “mass involvement in decision making”, “mass contribution to development” and “mass sharing of benefits of development” in consonance  with various UN resolutions.

Hence, the concept of ‘mass participation in decision making and implementation’ is viewed at ARM as a system of interlocking relationships between villagers & the village level institutions that mobilize this participation and strengthen the level of institution further up to the national mainstream. Our bottom up participatory long term approach, thus, seeks to release the social energy of the people towards attaining the self – defined goals of development and ratifies the principle of planning with the people through micro planning efforts with micro planning achievements incorporating the relevant principles of poverty alternation to contribute & complement this innovative paradigm.