Rural India

on the World Today

INDIA’S rural Community Development Program, an integral part of Nehru’s first Five-Year Plan, is the biggest of its kind ever undertaken in any part of the world. India’s federal and state governments are attempting to assume a degree of responsibility for meeting some of the agelong problems affecting village life: low standards of living, illiteracy, and disease.

The Indian farmer, like his counterpart in the United States, is hard-working; but unlike an American farmer, he is semi-starved as a result of inadequate income. He cannot easily take in new ideas; he prefers to resort to traditional methods and customs in farming. He hardly ever saves and is frequently in debt. Above all, he is at the mercy of wind and rain.

An immediate objective of the Community Development Program is to better the crop yield of the farmers who comprise nearly 80 per cent of India’s population and who are scattered in 600,000 villages. Since India’s resources are limited in relation to her ever-growing population, the government’s plan aims to concentrate on those areas which promise higher yield or which need immediate help. Other objectives of the agricultural development scheme are: reclamation of available virgin and waste land, construction of wells and irrigation canals, distribution of commercial fertilizers and seeds, introduction of better farm methods and implements, improvement of marketing and credit facilities, soil surveys, and adequate veterinary care for livestock.

Village volunteers

Through the Community Development Program, the government also builds schools, hospitals, social education centers, and village roads. Forty oneroom schools have been built in the Karjat District of Bombay, and nearly 40 per cent of the cost was borne by the local villagers. A maternity hospital in the same district has been completed at a total cost of $7800, of which 20 per cent was voluntarily borne by the villagers.

During the year ending September, 1953, the villagers in all the areas where community projects were started gave labor worth nearly $1,500,000, and almost an equal amount in cash, land, and materials.

Since the core of the Community Development Program is participation of the villagers, the Bharat Sevak Samaj — a private organization voluntarily formed by the people on a nation-wide scale — has been enlisting the coöperation of the local citizens to participate in the whole program. Explaining the purpose of this organization, Prime Minister Nehru urged the villagers to “function as comrades in a common task . . . to bring about, with our common labor, that joint effort which can shake and break up a mountain of inertia.”The government, by getting the villagers to volunteer, is building up a sense of responsibility and democratic leadership among the Indian peasants.

Fifty-five Community Development Projects were inaugurated on October 2, 1952. In the first two years, the program reached 23,450 villages, with a total population of 21 million. The program tries to meet the essential needs of the people. It may be that a village needs good roads or should develop the existing animal transport service; some villages need schools and adult education centers and library facilities; still others want to promote cottage industry or develop their housing, or even build guidance and recreation centers. While all these needs are important, priority is given to meet the local situation.

The National Extension Service (referred to as NES) was inaugurated at the same time as the Community Development Projects, and work has been started in 199 Development Blocks for 19,000 villages, covering 13 million people. Unlike the Community Development Program, NES is rather restricted in scope, with the main emphasis on agricultural improvement. But both of them can be described as “aided self-help programs,”and basically their aim is to help the villagers to help themselves.

Pilot project in Etawah

The pattern for future development projects has been set by three successful experiments. In Etawah District, situated between the Ganges and Jumna rivers in the south-central section of the state of Uttar Pradesh, ninety-seven villages with a population of nearly 80,000 have organized 52 village councils and 7 coöperatives. Thirty villages have organized their own field libraries, reading rooms, training camps, and an information center. A coöperatively run fortnightly newspaper in the Hindi language reaches over 1500 villagers. Through this paper, the farmers get information about crops and matters of local interest.

Adult education classes are becoming increasingly popular among the villagers. A researcher, visiting one of the classes, asked the students why they came. The answers were varied. “I should like to read newspapers and religious books,” said one man; another replied, “I used my thumbprint for signature — how pleased I am now to sign my own name.” Finally one replied, to the laughter of the whole class, that he came so that he could buy a radio, the thing he most desired in life! (The very idea of one farmer buying a radio sounded funny to the others because they thought this was beyond his reach.)

From swamp to township

Nilokeri, 85 miles from New Delhi, was until six years ago a swampland. Out of this swamp (nearly 800 acres) grew a township which has become the home and the workshop of nearly 7000 refugees from Pakistan. The area has been brought under cultivation and put under development. The town now has a brick kiln, a dairy, a poultry farm, a polytechnic school, a hospital, two primary schools, and a high school. Cottage industry — especially wood-carving, soapmaking, and iron and brass foundry — has engaged the special attention of the local villagers. The township is under an administrator appointed by the government of India, and its municipal affairs are managed by a council elected by the local inhabitants.

Faridabad — a township located about 17 miles from New Delhi — is divided into five villages, which provide industrial and agricultural occupation for nearly 25,000 refugees from Pakistan. Nearly 5000 two-room houses (with bath, kitchen, and a courtyard) have been constructed by the government for occupation by the refugees. Each village has been provided with a school and a health center. Also, there is a centrally located hospital which has nearly 150 beds, and it takes care of the patients from all five villages.

It is proposed to bring 120,000villages, or about one fourth of the entire rural population of India, under the influence of the Community Development Program and the National Extension Service during the period of India’s first Five-Year Plan (19511956). Seventy-four million people out of a total rural population of 295 million will be covered.

Financing the program

The program is largely supported by Indians — through taxes and voluntary contributions in cash or kind — and by loans and foreign aid. The United States Point Four aid to India among other things supplies fertilizer, iron and steel for manufacturing simple but improved farm implements, locust-fighters, and DDT to combat malaria, and provides facilities for constructing tube wells, and technicians to advise on various development measures.

Two supplementary agreements were signed by India and the United States on February 6, 1954. Under one agreement, 5000 tons of urea and ammonium sulphate and nitrate will be imported by India to demonstrate, test, and popularize the use of such fertilizers in India for better crop yield; the total cost amounts to $1,150,000. The second agreement makes available the engineering consultant services of a Chicago firm to the Damodar Valley Corporation (the TVA of India) at a cost to the United States of $632,000.

The government of India, with the financial assistance of the Ford Foundation, has set up a number of centers for training supervisory and professional staff for the Community Development Projects. The amount involved for the past two and a half years is $5,011,528. To guard against rigidity, the Ford Foundation has also granted to the Indian government $461,500 for a three-year program to evaluate the results.

The conservative peasants

The conservatism of the Indian peasants is deep-rooted in their social values. Caught between the old traditions and the new ideas, they sometimes find it hard to decide what is right for them or their children. A villager may be against using DDT because he feels that killing mosquitoes constitutes a sin; or traditional attitudes may complicate the problem of health or sanitation.

For example, a villager may think that smallpox is due to displeasure of a deity; he may keep his patient closeted in his ill-ventilated hut for fear that municipal authorities may hear about the occurrence of the disease and isolate the patient and spray disinfectant all over his living quarters; or he may not even like to have his children vaccinated. The villager may think that such acts would displease his family deity. In such matters, the supervisor has to understand the nature of the problem, and talk to the individuals concerned with utmost tact, bringing out the merits and demerits of the case without upsetting their sentiments too much.

American technicians in India sometimes find it hard to bring home to the Indian workers or villagers some of their techniques. The Indian village workers understand the fine points in the group discussion method, and its usefulness in tackling some of the village problems. But the village participants in group discussion need a better education to appreciate all aspects of the various problems.

For instance, in one village in India, the group discussion method was to be tried to ascertain the needs. An agenda was prepared by the chairman with various items listed for discussion: hospital, school, roads, and so forth. But it was the unanimous opinion of the group (composed of local villagers) that what they needed most was a temple.

Assuming that the villagers do understand the significance of the problem, there is still another difficulty with the Indian supervisory staff, who are in the employ of an administration more or less modeled after the British system. These officials were used to giving orders or to taking orders from their superiors for carrying out a measure. Now they have to sit with the groups and patiently discuss. Developing a different approach in solving village problems takes time.

What has been accomplished

The recent assessment of the program for the first two years of the Five-Year Plan, according to the Indian Planning Commission, indicates a definite measure of achievement. During the first year of the Plan (1951-1952) the production of food grains increased by 1.15 million tons.

In the second year of the Plan nearly 6 million acres of land (once a cultivable waste) were added to the acreage under the fall food grains. The final estimate of the fall food grains for the year 1952—1953 showed an increase of over 4 million tons, or about 12.4 per cent of the total production. Jute production went up by 1.4 million bales, cotton by 390,000 bales, and sugar cane by 300,000 tons.

The report for 1953—1954 reveals, among other things, that in the project areas as a whole, 150,494 compost pits, 508 demonstration farms, 259 breeding and artificial insemination centers were started; 7201 pedigreed birds were supplied to farmers to improve the quality of their poultry; 1464 new schools were started; 3707 adult education centers and 3019 community recreation centers were opened.

Thus the projects are generating a “progressive outlook among the rural population and the overall effect is so striking that there can be no doubt that the objective of increasing production is being steadily attained.”

Increasing agricultural production is less difficult and time-consuming than changing the attitudes of people brought up under certain traditions, customs, and religious scruples. Despite various drawbacks, India is determined to raise her standard of living through constant application of every available technical skill to achieve progress in health, progress in economics, and progress in political organization.

Prime Minister Nehru believes that these results can be better achieved under democracy. As rural Community Development progresses in India, the villager will understand the true significance of the democratic process. The success of the whole Community Development Program in India depends upon the villager. India’s rural Community Development has thus become a manifestation of the faith of the Indian people in the working of democratic government.