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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes ‘We must aim at progressively producing a measure of equality in opportunity and other things.’
In 1952 and in the later years, Nehru repeatedly referred to the Community Development
programme and the accompanying National Extension Service as representing ‘new dynamism’
and a ‘great revolution’ and as ‘symbols of the resurgent spirit of India’.
The programme achieved considerable results in extension work: better seeds, fertilizers, and so
on, resulting in agricultural development in general and greater food production, in particular,
construction of roads, tanks and wells, school and primary health centre buildings, and extension
of educational and health facilities. Initially, there was also a great deal of popular enthusiasm,
which, however, petered out with time. It soon became apparent that the programme had failed in
one of its basic objectives—that of involving the people as full participants in developmental
activity. Not only did it not stimulate self-help, it increased expectations from and reliance on the
government. It gradually acquired an official orientation, became part of the bureaucratic framework
and came to be administered from above as a routine activity with the BDOs becoming replicas of
the traditional sub-divisional officers and the Village Level Workers becoming administrative
underlings. As Nehru put it later, in 1963, while the entire programme was designed to get the
peasant ‘out of the rut in which he has been living since ages past’, the programme itself ‘has
fallen into a rut’.
The weaknesses of the programme had come to be known as early as 1957 when the Balwantrai
Mehta Committee, asked to evaluate it, had strongly criticized its bureaucratization and its lack of
popular involvement. As a remedy, the Committee recommended the democratic decentralization
of the rural and district development administration. On the Committee’s recommendation, it was
decided to introduce, all over the country, an integral system of democratic self-government with
the village panchayat at its base. The new system, which came to be known as Panchayati Raj and
was implemented in various states from 1959, was to consist of a three-tier, directly elected village
or gram panchayats, and indirectly elected block-level panchayat samitis and district-level zilla
parishads. The Community Development programme was to be integrated with the Panchayati
Raj; considerable functions, resources and authority were to be devolved upon the three-tiered
samitis to carry out schemes of development. Thus, the Panchayati Raj was intended to make up
a major deficiency of the Community Development programme by providing for popular
participation in the decision-making and implementation of the development process with the
officials working under the guidance of the three-level samitis. Simultaneously, the countryside
was covered by thousands of cooperative institutions such as cooperative banks, land mortgage
banks and service and market cooperatives, which were also autonomous from the bureaucracy as
they were managed by elected bodies.
Nehru’s enthusiasm was once again aroused as Panchayati Raj and cooperative institutions
represented another radical step for change in society. They would transfer responsibility for
development and rural administration to the people and accelerate rural development. They would
thus act as instruments for the empowerment of the people and would not only lead to greater
self-reliance, but would also act as an educative tool, for bringing about a change in the outlook of
the people. Above all, they would initiate the process of creating better human beings.
However, these hopes were belied. Though adopting Panchayati Raj in one form or another, the
state governments showed little enthusiasm for it, devolved no real power on the panchayati
samitis, curbed their powers and functions and starved them of funds. The bureaucracy too did
not slacken its grip on rural administration at different levels. Panchayats were also politicized
and used by politicians to gather factional support in the villages. As a result, though foundations
of a system of rural local self-government were laid, democratic decentralization as a whole was
stunted and could not perform the role assigned to it by the Balwantrai Mehta Committee and
Jawaharlal Nehru.
Moreover, the benefits of community development, new agricultural inputs and the extension
services were mostly garnered hythe rich peasants and capitalist farmers, who also came to dominate
the Panchayati Raj institutions.

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