Community Development in India
WOYTINSKY, W. S.
The Awakening Giant-3 Community Development in India By W S. Woytinsky "I believe that the most significant development in | India has been the development of the Community Projects and...
...30,000 village latrines and 20,000 mills constructed...
...public-address tape recorders...
...The Second Plan provides that, by 1961, 40 per cent of the rural population will be covered by the Community Development Administration, the rest by the National Extension Service...
...The director of Social Education was a graduate of Michigan University, later professor of sociology *Snpplio, and technical for the Communitation Development program were provded by the United States under a special operational agreement and supplements thereof...
...Perhaps the Development agents were exaggerating their success somewhat...
...The strict rule of the Development Administration is to cover a part of the expenses of the community and individual farmers in their development and betterment projects but to undertake no project unless the people are ready to carry a part of the cost...
...threshing and other agricultural machines: road rollers, pumps ami and pipes for wells...
...At the beginning, many farmers hesitated to accept this unusual proposal of the Government officials, but after the first harvest the advantage of the improved seed was so obvious that the whole village shifted to the new practice...
...Was there any spark of life left in these people...
...Another source of lack of acute interest in elementary schools among the leaders of Community Development may be their skepticism about the existing elementary school programs that do not go further than the three Rs...
...The sanitation expert proudly pointed out the new public and individual latrines...
...We had visited a community house and were driving to another village across an arid plain when the elder man broke his silence...
...With more effort, a tank can be built big enough to raise the level of underground water in dry season and feed the dry wells in the community...
...We asked our guide how the funds for such buildings are raised...
...We have no shovels and no money to buy pipes and cement...
...The experience of Nilokheri proved that this aim could be achieved, and the name of this plan became the symbol of the movement...
...The Community Projects organization grew out of a series of experiments designed to test bow Indian farmers can improve their living conditions simply by using better methods in tilling the soil and without substantial capital investment...
...I also learned the poultry business there...
...What is demanded from the rank-and-file farmer is a rupee or two...
...During the question period after a lecture on the prospects of economic progress in underdeveloped areas, I received a written question: "What would you recommend as the first step in the economic policy of an underdeveloped country with 80 per cent of the population illiterate...
...In other villages, the Government agents advise the farmers to dig tanks for collecting monsoon water...
...He abandoned his books for the thankless task of organizing Social Education in the villages because he believed that the future of his country depended on the revival of the common man...
...A group of specially trained officials is assigned to each block: one for agriculture, another for animal husbandry, others for reclamation, irrigation and well drilling, health and sanitation, welfare, education and recreation, cooperatives and handicraft training...
...Thus the question of reviving rural India, rehabilitating its farmers and landless farm hands became the central problem in building the new democratic India...
...The last weakness of the program is revealed by the progress reports of the Administration...
...The problem of education will be solved in India if and when the country accepts the fundamental idea of the Community Development the idea of fostering economic revival by influencing the attitudes, the thought and feeling of the people as the basis of all economic planning...
...We visited a chicken farm...
...On one of our trips to Community Development projects we were accompanied by two officials, the head of a Development Block, a big man bristling with enthusiasm and energy, and the director of Social Education projects for the whole province, an elderly, taciturn man with a mild, ironical smile in his eyes...
...replied the Development agents...
...After the harvest, other villagers joined the plan, new wells were This is the third of four articles on today's India by W.' S. Woytinsky (rut at left), author of numerous volumes on the world economy, who recently relumed from a nine-monlh trip to Asia...
...built, new patches of green appeared in the Indian desert...
...But I felt no exaggeration in their contention that the program was bringing life to dead soil, dead villages, half-dead people...
...We observed the change in the cultivation of rice in some villages: from the primitive sowing of seed to the Japanese method of planting seedlings in flooded fields, a procedure that demands more labor from the farmer but rewards him with a substantial increase in the yield...
...Special development councils are elected for each five or ten villages and for the whole block...
...But apparently it is of revolutionary significance in India: With such a hearth in each home, the village could shift from dung cakes to brown-coal briquettes as fuel, using dung as fertilizer...
...When reading the progress reports of the Administration, one is lost in large numbers of small projects...
...He was not satisfied with the progress in digging of compost pits and wells and the distribution of seed...
...scarcity of funds, shortage of teachers, opposition of illiterate parents, child labor in fields and at home, etc...
...They require almost continuous pumping in dry season, but they mark the frontier between green fields and parched soil...
...the level from which people had to start was pathetic...
...But the reward will be worth the effort not only a much larger yield but often also a second crop from the same field...
...In Ohio and Michigan," he replied, beaming...
...How should we start...
...Those who were giving serious thought to the problem of rural India tried to assess its human resources...
...A primitive tank is enough to provide water for livestock...
...Improved seed is offered to the farmers free of charge, with the promise of its replacement after the harvest...
...In many villages, we saw the newly dug tanks...
...Here and there we saw schools built by the community, with the participation of the Government...
...Some stretches from the village to the next highway were not longer than 3-5 miles...
...A process of rejuvenation set in...
...We met many intellectuals who felt as we do about the school program...
...In contrast with other plans of economic development in India and elsewhere, the Community Development program is not a program of action by Government agencies but a people's program, actually a people's movement with Government participation...
...500 blocks were organized under the National Extension Service, with the same program but without special teams of workers in charge of each block, without special flourish and with less enthusiasm...
...asked the farmers...
...I would not have called them houses these old thatched sheds with mud walls, no doors or windows, earth floors, no trace of furniture, often no household utensils but a bowl and a pitcher...
...Here the Japanese method adjusted to local conditions was applied with hired labor, as a demonstration...
...Now the village was ready for some new project...
...His big companion listened with an expression of honest effort to understand what we were talking about...
...Yet things are changing...
...The improved houses have a hole in the wall under the roof with a protruding 6-inch-long pipe an exhaust chimney for the smoke...
...Whoever cannot pay cash offers his labor...
...According to report of the Administration, it received equipmentl worth $12.2 million from the United States up to March This is a minor outlas, in the U. S. budget, but out of the best directed must efficients used onlaws...
...The Community Development program has been remarkably successful in the limited field assigned to it...
...But this was only a part of the problem...
...It combines the program of an elementary school with the development of character and moral strength and with training in arts (usually music and dance) and handicrafts...
...If only they knew how to use them for individual and collective welfare...
...Not consumer cooperatives because there are no shops in small Indian villages but producer cooperatives, for various handicrafts, purchase of yarn or agricultural machinery, etc...
...We saw a few huts with fresh, newly adjusted doors, even one joint family adobe consisting of four rooms with four doors...
...It starts from very simple premises: Muscles and brains of men can do it, they can be trained to do it, conditions can be created for their development and effective use...
...His business was booming...
...There was not much to see in them just primitive ponds, dry at the time of our visit but ready to receive precious water from monsoons...
...One has to see the "common man" of rural India to grasp the philosophy of the program...
...The conditions vary from village to village...
...He was a member of Parliament and wished to get my support for his opinion...
...This attitude may be explained by the timetable of the program: It had to show tangible results, visible changes in rural life in three or four years...
...Meetings are held and demonstrations of improved agricultural techniques given in each village or each group of villages...
...They were proud of their achievements...
...Indeed, it required the individual effort of each farmer heavv labor with only a vague chance, they thought, of future gains...
...school facilities for some 100,000 pupils in an area with some 10 million children of school age...
...The task was to build a better communal life on the basis of improved agriculture...
...in some fields, it tripled or even quadrupled...
...We saw experimental rice fields along the highway...
...What I describe here as the weakness of the Community Development program is characteristic of the whole Five Year Plan, and more broadly of the thinking of Indian political leaders and intellectuals at large...
...Something life-giving went to them and their eyes brightened and their arms began to function and their muscles became stronger...
...The task seems forbiddingly difficult...
...The professor thought that I might be right after all...
...Under this arrangement, the young poultry farmer felt that he was working for the Government while the buyers fell that they were gelling a bargain by paying only part of the price...
...In addition...
...In Etawah, an area with 102 villages and ??a population of 50.000 was selected, and a team of U.S...
...Usually the village supplies labor and the Government pays for materials, but sometimes the school is built by a contractor and costs are distributed between the Government and community...
...What transforms a mob into a community...
...Why does a man grow in stature in one situation and fail in another...
...Usually the burden is shared by half a dozen or a dozen villages...
...And then there are the usual objections: "We have no shovels, no wheelbarrows, no boards, no cement...
...An experimental station for the development of seed best fitted for local conditions, a dispensary center, and a veterinary post with a cattle-breeding station are established...
...The director of the block emphasized the improvements in the layout of villages and individual houses...
...The young farmer was raising and selling laying hens and roosters...
...The director confessed that it would take many, many years to teach peasants to build hearths and also to provide enough coal for them...
...The holy river Ganges can have no existence of her own save as the vehicle for all the streams that flow into her as tributaries...
...The only difference is that some training in handicrafts is added...
...It was conceived as a campaign to arouse 70 million rural families to their right to a better life, to release their energy in a collective effort toward social and economic welfare...
...What was their potential strength...
...In three years, the average per-acre yield of wheat doubled...
...We also visited a small village of Untouchables...
...This explains, their urge to convert elementary schools into the "basic" type...
...Second, the program does not put enough emphasis on general education as a means of training new generations for living and working in a new political, social and economio environment...
...To our surprise the farmer, a young man in a clean white shirt, greeted us with a hearty "Welcome, welcome here...
...The Government is ready with loans, us a means of aiding people to help themselves: A sizable part of the allocations for Community Development is earmarked for credit operations...
...And yet when I asked a teacher to permit me to examine his pupils, he dug out an old notebook from a heap of rags and papers in the corner...
...We jeeped from village to village on primitive roads built by the peasants...
...But most of the Indian villages were in a state of extreme poverty and human degradation...
...He wished me to have a picture of his house with the posters...
...As a democratic regime, the rule of the majority came into operation, and it became clear that the forgotten men in villages and hamlets represent the backbone of the nation...
...nobody thought of the allocation of effort required, and all were jubilant when the tank was completed...
...The irrigation expert, after surveying local conditions, may suggest that the farmers dig wells, each of which would provide water for a field of 3-5 acres...
...Development officials told us that at the beginning the idea of digging wells met with little enthusiasm among the villagers...
...Last week, he de-seribed the Five Year Plan...
...Going back to the parable of the Farmer's Son, these are rivulets flowing into the Ganges...
...Wherever we went, there was a jeep at our disposal and competent officials to accompany us...
...projectors, hand cameras and film units, etc...
...Wealthy farmers there are comparatively prosperous men even in the poorest villages volunteer to contribute more than their share...
...The veterinary displayed his instruments and test tubes...
...After some hesitation and further explanations, a farmer or two usually volunteered to try...
...At that time, will the people develop new practices following the leaders who emerge from their ranks...
...Then the question is put to each community and each individual farmer: What are your most urgent needs...
...In this case, the collective effort of the villagers is needed, a communal project of a new kind...
...In Rajastan one of the poorest provinces in India we were shown the old and improved houses...
...To a Western observer, the program is fascinating because of its combination of mysticism and common sense...
...agricultural experts was assigned to show farmers how to use improved seed, rotate wheat and local legumes, and utilize farm waste as compost...
...On this day in 1867," writes a Farmer's Son in the monthly organ of the Community Projects Administration, "was born a lone man in a lone corner of this subcontinent, frail in body, sharp in mind, with a heart tender as the petals of the morning rose yet hard as the blade of seasoned steel, an embodiment of the common man...
...So we jeeped across the smoldering desert and talked sociology...
...We also saw the new wells and spoke with peasants...
...They realize, of course, the advantages of literacy and the need for schools, and they approve of compulsory education for all boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 14 as promised by the Constitution...
...I do not believe that much can be achieved in the field of Social Education, i.e., remolding of people, in such a short time...
...Most of them are small- often a score, rarely more than 100 members...
...Some Community Projects, such as the model villages with irrigated fields adjoining new hydroelectric stations, have become very popular with visitors...
...But what is Social Education...
...The enthusiastic instructors told us that the new technique was spreading like wildfire in the country...
...The pupils squat on the dirt floor, the teacher stands in front of the building, poorly clothed and barefoot one cannot afford to buy shoes on a salary of 40-50 rupees ($8-10) a month...
...In the middle of such a hut one saw the remains of a fire of cow dung cakes...
...By March 1955, some 450,000 compost pits were dug, half a million demonstrations held, 100.000 soakage pits...
...How is it possible to determine whether a man can be trained as a local leader...
...Next, the question of water arises the most difficult, vital question in many parts of India...
...The owner of one house, seeing that I intended to take a picture, waved to me to wait a moment...
...Community Development projects deserve the particular attention of American readers because the United States can be proud of its contribution to the success of this movement...
...The real test of the program, he thought, would come after the emergency projects were completed and the Community Projects Administration was succeeded by the National Extension Service...
...The role of the intellectuals, as represented by the Government, was to provide the initiative and inspiration at the outset of the movement...
...It has failed in the field of general education because this problem cannot be tackled in the framework of a blitz-campaign in single villages...
...The results of experiments at Nilokheri, Etawah, Faridabad and other places were highly encouraging...
...He went into his house and reappeared with two posters of the Community Development Administration...
...What makes a leader...
...The Awakening Giant-3 Community Development in India By W S. Woytinsky "I believe that the most significant development in | India has been the development of the Community Projects and National Extension Service in the vast rural areas of India," wrote Nehru prefacing a collection of essays on Community Projects...
...I noticed only two weak points in this program: First, it counts on a too-rapid success...
...The idle arms of people began to work, their muscles became stronger as Nehru described the impact of the program...
...in the histors of our foreign aid in one of the leading Indian universities...
...After the lecture, the author of the note came to shake hands with me...
...Finally, he joined us on our trip and on the way back confessed that it had opened his eyes...
...The size of this settlement was, however, limited to a score of households: It was decided that building an Untouchable village would contradict the idea of a casteless society...
...Many teachers of economics in provincial universities consider them a sideshow, loosely connected with the historical drama of India's transformation into a great industrial power...
...Generation after generation, his ancestors lived from hand to mouth, without thought of the future, without hope for economic improvement, without communal life except for religious rites and family feasts, without cohesion among men...
...Some school buildings are nothing but flimsy sheds with three walls, open in front, without any furniture or equipment...
...he was surprised by our intention to drive by jeep through remote villages, exposing ourselves to the blazing sun, dust and awful rural roads...
...How to distribute water provided by the tank...
...I shall return to this point in my concluding article...
...With the end of colonial rule, the people of India became masters of their destiny...
...Cooperatives emerge in the Community Development blocks almost automatically...
...Some farmers have accepted the new method, others remain skeptical...
...I contended that the program had a chance of success not immediately, in three or four years, but in 15 or 20 years after a new generation enters active economic and political life and those who are now in elementary schools have grown up to take over...
...I asked him...
...Our guide, the head of the Development Block, explained that the Untouchables had manifested more interest in Community Development than other villagers, and now they had the best houses in the whole block...
...This notion became the foundation of the Community Development program...
...The fruits of education need more time to ripen...
...But before these roads were built the villages had been isolated from the world for several months each year...
...How can we dig wells...
...A Community Development province director showed us a wooden model of a primitive hearth the administration intends to recommend to the farmers a contraption that reminded me of a field-kitchen in a Boy Scout camp...
...there were some particularly fertile areas with comparatively prosperous villages and some progressive princedoms...
...Their strength was in the multitude??there were millions, scores of millions of them and each one had arms and brains...
...The Government foots the bill for 25-50 per cent of all costs...
...This was proof that, by using his arms and brains in accordance with the experience of more developed areas, the Indian farmer has a chance to improve his lot...
...But they feel that other things, such as the improvement of seed, the betterment of livestock, irrigation and industrialization, are more urgent...
...But the Government agents bring movies showing how similar tanks were built in other villages, offer tools and materials free of charge and ultimately sometimes after month-long deliberation the village decides to build the tank...
...We are developing Social Education centers, he said...
...All men and women, young and old worked on the project...
...In the old, unimproved huts the smoke fills up the room and escapes through the roof and walls...
...In the first two-and-a-half years of operation, 3,535 rural schools were started, and 1,727 converted into the "basic" type.* In round numbers, 3,500 new schools for 70,000 villages, one school per 20 villages...
...35,000 tons of improved seed distributed, 100,000 acres brought under cultivation for fruit and vegetables, 700,000 acres brought under irrigation, 250,000 acres reclaimed...
...By 1955-56, a total of 700 Community Development blocks covering some 70,000 villages with a population of approximately 50 million were established...
...What makes the Community Development "the most significant development in India" is not only its immediate impact on rural life but the fact that it attacks a vital economic problem from the side of the human factor...
...Similarly, new life will come to the villages when all the streams and rivulets of energy that spring out of the individual desire for betterment are directed to the common aim...
...The lists of equipment, published byCommunits Projectsi Include jeeps, true trucks...
...His concluding article, next week, will deal with India's economic ideology...
...To my surprise, all four children I picked out could read fluently enough...
...Villages were ruled by landowners and elders of hereditary wealthy families, guardians of traditions, opposed to any change...
...I replied: "Such a country should begin with the development of an elementary school system...
...he hoped I was right...
...This means more than 1,800 Development blocks and over 3,000 NES blocks...
...What these figures really mean is that 50 million men And women were reclaimed as members of a democratic community.* Under the heading of Social Education, the Administration reports that 22,000 Community Centers were started and 11,000 units of people's organization developed in the first two-and-a-half years...
...My impression is that, compared with other projects, elementary education in villages does not rank very high in the minds of the leaders of the movement...
...Its future ultimately depends on them, even if they themselves do not realize this, live far from the political turmoil of big cities and have no interest in public issues...
...Although some Indian intellectuals and economic planners may find Nehru's statement somewhat too sweeping, I agree with him wholeheartedly...
...But five or six houses were different each one with a door and tiny porch flanked by two windows...
...Most of the dwellings were of the usual type thatched roof surmounting mud walls without windows...
...Indian newspapers do not give much space to Community Projects, perhaps because they are not spectacular enough...
...Of course, it cannot be applied everywhere and many years will elapse before Indian farmers learn to handle their fields with the care and skill of the Japanese...
...We met a young university professor, teacher of industrial economics, a follower of Keynesian theory with some interest in the American input-output technique, who had never visited any Development Project in his state...
...October 2 was chosen because it is the birthday of Gandhi...
...the Community Development Administration has to complete its task in a Development Block in three or four years...
...Dispensaries, maternity centers and community houses are built in the same way, some of them unexpectedly substantial, worth $1,000 and more...
...The situation was not equally grim in all parts of the subcontinent...
...Where did you pick up English...
...In other words, the program emphasizes the physical effort of man, energizing the reserves of manpower for "purposeful endeavor for individual and collective betterment...
...The Administration tried to introduce poultry in all the villages of the Block...
...They had given their labor, the Government had supplied supervision, cement, iron for bridges and in some cases surfacing materials...
...But we were eager to see the everyday practice of Community Development in different parts of India, and the Community Project Administration provided us with all the necessary facilities...
...To make the operation more attractive to both sides, the Administration fixed prices with the provision that the villagers pay 75 per cent to the poultry farmer and the Government supply the rest...
...How to allocate necessary work among the villagers...
...If you give your labor, the Government will give you pipes and all you need for the work...
...The Development officials were eager to show us everything each new well, each new field, each compost pit, each stretch of newly-built road...
...The professor was not sure...
...Such wells are widespread in India...
...Probably we would not be impressed by these figures if we had not seen the people who carried out these projects...
...Its operation year runs from October 2 through October 1 of the next year...
...unicroscopes, rorefrigerators and hospital equipment...
...For the first time . . we tackled the rural problem in a realistic way by inducing the people themselves to solve their own problems...
...His first article conveyed his general impressions...
...tructors, plans, cultivators, tholor...
...now he agreed with me that the rural development movement is the foundation of India's economic revival...
...These figures are disappointing, even allowing for the *a basic school is supposed to follow Gandhi's idea of what a school must do to prepare the children for life...
...The common man, symbol of India, often had no personal possession but the rags on his shoulders...
...The Community Development and National Extension Service is not a major item in Indian economic planning: The First Five Year Plan allocated only $200 million for all programs under this heading, the Second Plan $410 million approximately 4 per cent of all outlays for development projects in both cases...
...The Farmer's Son quoted above used a parable...
...However, the basic schools we visited differ little from the ordinary schools they are as poor in equipment, as filthy and have the same underpaid teaching personnel...
...Development agents told us about the effect of the common effort on the village...
...The unit of operation is a Development Block, usually an area of 150 to 170 square miles, with approximately 100 villages and a total rural population of 60,000 to 70,000...
...If a community decides to build a school and cover a certain part of the expenses, the Administration contributes the rest of the funds...
...It would be pointless to measure the progress by Western standards...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 35
