International Journal of Computer & Organization Trends –Volume 2 Issue 4 July to August 2012 ISSN: 2249-2593 http://www.ijcotjournal.org Page 11 Gradation of NGO’s Role in Rural Development: A Fuzzy Soft Set Theoretic Approach Naba Krishna Borah 1 , Tridiv Jyoti Neog 2 1 Department of Humanities, Jorhat Institute of Science And Technology, Jorhat, Assam, India 2 Department of Mathematics, CMJ University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India Abstract— The non-governmental organizations (NGO) are recognized as important institutional actors that are expected to facilitate the participation of beneficiaries in the development programmes such as mobilising community assets, motivating people, implementing social welfare programmes for the deprived one regarding their education, social status, health awareness, economic development etc. The flexibility of structures, involvement of beneficiaries and commitment of functionaries are critical to the effectiveness of NGOs. This article aims to find out rational and logical solutions about the involvement of NGOs in certain rural development activities. With the help of fuzzy soft sets, in our article, an attempt has been made to grade NGO’s role on the basis of their strategies and functions. Keywords— Soft Set, Fuzzy Soft Set, Decision Making, NGO. I. INTRODUCTION Most of the concepts we meet in our day to day life are not precise. Mathematical modeling of such day to day problems involving uncertainties is of great importance now a days. There are theories e.g. Probability Theory, Fuzzy Set Theory, Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Theory, Rough Set Theory etc. to deal with problems involving uncertainties. However these theories are found to be inadequate in recent times. Infact, the inadequacy of the parameterization tool in these theories do not allow them to handle vagueness properly. In 1999 Molodtsov [3] introduced the concept of Soft Sets and established the fundamental results of the new theory. Soft Set Theory is free from the difficulties present in Fuzzy Set Theory, Rough Set Theory, Probability Theory etc. In 2001, Maji [6] studied the theory of soft sets and initiated some new results. Neog and Sut [7] further redefined complement of a soft set and showed that the axioms of exclusion and contradiction are satisfied by the soft sets also. In recent times, fuzzification of Soft Set Theory is developing rapidly. Combining fuzzy sets and soft sets, Maji et al. [5] put forward a new model known as fuzzy soft set. He introduced some properties regarding fuzzy soft union, intersection, complement of a fuzzy soft set, De Morgan Law etc. Ahmad and Kharal [2] further revised and improved these results. Now a days, application of Fuzzy Soft Set Theory in many disciplines and real life situations have been studied by many researchers. The Indian Society is basically rural in character where two third of the population lives in villages and majority of them depends on agriculture which constitutes the Indian Economy. The government of India, during the last five and half decade initiated a number of programmes to meet the basic needs of the rural people and to eliminate poverty. Since the first five year plan in 1951, planning is considered as one of the important tool for the development of the nation through people’s participation in Community Development Programmes and National Extension Service Programmes. However, anomaly of this scheme was pointed out later by the Balwantrai Mehta Committee and accordingly Panchayati Raj System was introduced in 1959 with high hope [4]. However, without giving it fair trial, from the late sixties, government adopted a new strategy of development popularly known as Green Revolution. By late 1960’s, it was recognized that the benefits of such growth were not ultimately reaching the target group and it has in turn widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The government has initiated several special programmes during various five year programmes to ensure economic development in the rural area by means of people’s participation and also has tried to encourage Self Help Groups as well as NGO s for implementation of the programmes rather than government organizations. Our work is an endeavour to develop a mathematical model using the theory of fuzzy soft sets in the gradation of NGO s depending on their role in rural development. II. PRELIMINARIES A. Definition 1 [3] A pair (F, E) is called a soft set (over U) if and only if F is a mapping of E into the set of all subsets of the set U. In other words, the soft set is a parameterized family of subsets of the set U. Every set E F    ), ( , from this family may be considered as the set of  - elements of the soft set (F, E), or as the set of  - approximate elements of the soft set.