Democracy is for the People, of the People and by the People in a society. In a democracy, participant media theory says the right to relevant local information, right to answer back and the right to use the new means of communication for interaction and social action in small setups of community, interest group or subculture. Both theory and technology have challenged the necessity and desirability of uniform, centralized, high-cost, commercialized, professionalized state controlled media. In their place multiple, small scale, local, non-institutional and committed media should be encouraged which links the senders to the receiver and also favor horizontal patterns of interaction. Both freedom and self regulation are seemed to have failed under the current situation which makes the necessity for democratized format of communication as more relevant.

The concepts participatory and sustainable are central to contemporary communication for development practices. Participation refers to the involvement of citizens/beneficiaries in defining, designing, implementing and evaluating development interventions. Participation is an end in human development. It is a basic requirement for the evolution of democratic societies and their sustainable development. The term sustainable development encompasses self propagated interventions whose outcomes are environmentally and culturally sound and can be continued by the community after depletion of any resources which might have been provided by external agencies. Many of these dynamic aberrations would be affected directly by policies related to control of technology and its development and implementations. Will such control rest exclusively with corporations and the marketplace in which they compete and influence with government or with world citizenry. There is no denial to the fact that waves of change in communication models have already set in.

However, Marshall Mcluhan's global villages is becoming more of a reality as the participatory media typically designated as local, small scale and more democratically organized media such as community radio stations or public access video which are coming into existence for social upliftment.