Report of the team for the study of community projects and national extension service

To us in this country the term 'community development' is of recent origin. We have so far used such terms as rural development, constructive work, adult education and rural uplift to denote certain of its aspects. The word "Community" has, for the past many decades, denoted religious or caste groups or, in some instances, economic groups not necessarily living in one locality; but with the inauguration of the community development programme in this country, it is intended to apply it to the concept of the village community as a whole, cutting across caste, religious and economic differences. It is a programme which emphasises that the interest in the development of the locality is necessarily and unavoidably common to all the people living there. The Planning Com mission, in their First Five-Year Plan, described community development as the "method through which the Five-Year Plan seeks to initiate a pro-/ cess of transformation of the social and economic life of the villages". This method is to process the development of the area through people's own democratic and cooperative organisations, the Government helping only with technical advice, supplies and credit. It is "designed to promote better living for whole community with the active participation and, if possible, on the initiative of the community; but if this initiative is not forthcoming, by the same use of techniques for arousing and stimulating it in order to secure its active and enthusiastic response".

While operating through the people's local organisations, the programme simultaneously strengthens the foundations of democracy on which our Constitution stands, by making the villager understand the significance of development and his own position in the process of deve lopment, and it makes him realise his position in this vast democracy. Thus, community development and democracy progress through and strengthen each other. The community projects are of vital importance "not so much for the material achievement that they would bring about but much more so, because they seem to build up the community and the individual and to make the latter the builder of his own village. centres and of India in the larger sense.