Community Development Programmes

In the first Five Year Plan years, the government tried something more ambitious than any single plan target. It set out to remake half a million villages from within, one administrative Block at a time. The scheme mostly failed. But that failure built something more durable than the scheme itself.

1Chapter 1: India’s First Major Rural Development Initiative

Must Know

Launch

• The Community Development Programme (CDP) launched on 2 October 1952, across 55 pilot Development Blocks.
• It was independent India’s first major rural development initiative.
• It was timed deliberately to Gandhi Jayanti.

The machinery

• The basic administrative unit was the Development Block, each covering roughly 100 villages.
• A Block Development Officer (BDO) headed every Block.
• Below the BDO, Village Level Workers (VLWs) were the frontline extension staff.
• They were meant to carry new farming methods and services directly to villagers.

National Extension Service

• The National Extension Service (NES) launched on 2 October 1953, a year later.
• It spread similar Block machinery across a much wider area.
• It ran at a lower level of funding per Block than the original CDP.

Foreign-funded, American-trained

• CDP was not purely indigenous.
• It ran on Ford Foundation grants and support under the Indo-US Technical Co-operation Agreement.
• Ford alone gave over $150 million toward Indian development work between 1952 and 1992.
• S.K. Dey, the official who built and ran the programme, trained as an engineer at Purdue and Michigan in the United States.
• Dey went on to become independent India’s first Union Minister for Community Development, Cooperation and Panchayati Raj.

2Chapter 2: What the Mehta Committee Found

Good to Know

Two goals at once

• Officially, the programme had two goals.
• One was to raise agricultural output and rural infrastructure.
• The other was to transform village society through people’s own participation.
• Production and social transformation together was an ambitious combination for one programme.

No genuine “popular initiative”

• The government appointed the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee on 16 January 1957 to review both programmes.
• It found the programme had not evoked genuine “popular initiative.”
• It judged both CDP and NES too bureaucratic and too top-down to be truly participatory.

Elite capture and the structural fix

• The Committee flagged elite capture as a core failure.
• Benefits skewed toward already-influential local elites, not the rural poor.
• It submitted its report on 24 November 1957.
• Its central recommendation was a three-tier system of democratic decentralisation: village, intermediate and district.
• By name: the Gram Panchayat at village level, the Panchayat Samiti at the Block level, and the Zila Parishad at district level.
• Rajasthan, at Nagaur, became the first state to adopt Panchayati Raj on 2 October 1959.
• See Panchayati Raj Institutions in India.

3Chapter 3: The Real Design Flaw

Great to Know

It was not money

• CDP’s real design flaw was not funding or intent.
• It was who held authority.
• Every Block was run by a centrally appointed bureaucrat, the BDO.
• The BDO was answerable up a state hierarchy, not to the villagers below.

Panchayati Raj inverted the reporting line

• Panchayati Raj fixed that by inverting the reporting line.
• It replaced appointed officials with elected representatives at every one of the three tiers.
• They answer to voters instead of a department above them.

A lesson that reshaped every reform

• Planners drew a lasting lesson: top-down bureaucratic delivery cannot substitute for genuine local participation.
• It reshaped every decentralisation reform that followed.
• For the full story, including the decades-long wait for constitutional protection, see The Founding of Panchayati Raj: From Committee to Constitution.
• See also Panchayati Raj and Local Government Finance and Planning Commission and Five Year Plans.

Quick Q&A

• CDP launched? 2 October 1952.
• Pilot Blocks? 55.
• Mehta report date? 24 November 1957.
• First state to adopt Panchayati Raj? Rajasthan, at Nagaur, 2 October 1959.
• CDP’s design flaw? Authority sat with appointed officials.