Community development in India
- Delhi Pub. Div. 1958
- 157 p.
India had been bypassed by ages of evolution during which a part of the world, now known as advanced, leaped from the cowdung to the steam, gasoline and electric age. India hugged on to life associated with the cattle and the dung heap. She continued revelling in her pastime of sing ing the glory of a dead past. Pre-occupation with philosophy and metaphysics was the only pride left to her. However, philosophy devoid of physics is but soul minus the body. No wonder we continued to be so dominated by the cult of the ghosts.
With noise and light concentrated in the towns and cities of India there was virtual darkness dominating the country side which houses the bread-producers of this vast sub-con tinent-82 per cent of its population. The 5,50,000 villages of India, with their eyes turned towards the growing neon light civilisation in our urban settlements, struggled and just sub sisted somehow. Every year saw a further influx of the active minds and muscles, and the product of these, in a one-way traffic towards these settlements: The spark of Community Development, ignited in 1952, introduced an un settling element in this stagnant poel... The villagers prick ed their ears, and began to sense something to which they were least accustomed. No wonder, everyone who gave a smile to the villager was hailed a hero, and the Community Development Programme which did appear to offer the sub stance of nourishment to the long-famished farmers receiv ed the encomium, both in India and abroad, surpassing by far anything that has happened in recent times.