The Genesis
Launched in 1943, in the wake of the Bengal famine, the Grow More Food Campaign. (GMFC) was India's first organised effort to increase food production. The campaign had a two-pronged approach. First, to bring idle but potentially productive land under the plough, and second, to stimulate cultivator interest in increasing crop yield per hectare. In 1948, the GMFC was reviewed by the Thakurdass Committee and following
its recommendations, the campaign was reoriented in 1950-51. In the following year,
the GMFC became part of the First Five Year Plan. In 1952, the Government of India
(Goi) appointed the Grow More Food Inquiry Committee· under the chairmanship of
Sir V.T. Krishnamachari to evaluate the campaign. The Committee found, inter alia, that
(a) all aspects of village life are interrelated and no lasting results can be achieved if
individual aspects of it were dealt with in isolation; and (b) the movement touched only
a fringe of the population and did not arouse widespread enthusiasm and, hence, did
not become in any sense a national programme. The Committee also made a number of
recommendations regarding the future policy of the GMFC. One of the recommendations
was that an extension agency should be set up for rural work, which would reach every
farmer in the country and assist in the coordinated development of rural life. It was out
of this background and experience that the CDP was designed and launched.
The Basic Premises
The basic premises uPderlying the India's decision to create the national CDP 1952 are
presented in Box 9.1 (Ensminger 1968: 3).
Box 9.1 Basic Premises of Community Development Programme
1. The overall development of the rural community can be brought about only with effective participation of the people, backed by the coordination of technical and other services necessary for securing the best from such initiative and self-help. It was to provide the necessary institutional structure and services that early attention was given to the development of basic democratic village institutions,especially panchayati raj, cooperatives and village schools.
2. The problems of rural development have to be viewed from a holistic perspective and the efforts to solve them have to be multifaceted.
One of the major initial moving forces in community development was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's interest in the Programme. Nehru felt that one of India's most important undeveloped resources was the people living in its some 6,00,000 villages. Nehru saw in community development the way to involve the village people in building a new India. He visualised that through their involvement in self-help oriented programmes, would come the development of the people and people's institutions, both of which are essential ingredients in moving India towards one of its most clearly stated
objectives, that is, developing India into a viable democracy.