Community development

The ideal inhabits the fervent heart of man. But when it seeks to actualise itself it encounters myriad resistances, which the spirit should accept as challenges rather than frustrations, if the flame within is not to burn out and die.

With the pulling out of alien rulers, free dom became a legal reality in India. But the real struggle had only begun, for the task of making this freedom a living reality in the political, economic and social planes was bound to be a cataclysmic one.

There is no salvation, economic or politi cal, for the individual, except as a member of the community. The Community Develop ment programme was launched ten years ago. When it gathered momentum it was found that rther progress would be blocked if the village communities of India did not take over the authority of decision-making. Today it has become clear as daylight that political democracy cannot be isolated from economic and social democracy.

More than any one else in India, except ing the Prime Minister, Shri Dey has had the most intimate experience of this vast, prolife rating growth both of concept and actuality. He started as the Administrator and then the Indian Union's Minister for Community Development. The logic of the momentum of growth has invested his Ministry with the responsibility for the establishment of Pan chayati Raj and for achieving economic democracy through the extension of co-opera tion both as a philosophy and a programme.

This record of Shri Dey's experience and of the drama of many challenging confronta tions in concept and programme which it unfolds is probably the most authentically human document of India's post-Indepen dence struggle for the realisation of democ racy in the full depth of its meaning. Since the adventure is unfinished, there is no fina lity in the findings. The thoughts recorded here will have to prolong themselves in the minds of the readers, thus enabling them to make their contribution. In this feature Shri Dey is being loyal to his deepest convictions, for he has always believed that the ultimate decision should rest with the community, not the individual.