The Coverage
The CDP was formally inaugurated on 2 October 1952. Initially it was launched in
55 project areas located in different parts of the country. Another 110 areas had necessarily
to be added to the original 55 in the course of six months in response to popular demands
from the members of state legislatures and the Members of Parliament (MPs). A new,
somewhat less ambitious, scheme called the National Extension Service (NES) was evolved
and launched in 1953. Whereas in the CDP, intensive development was taken up in all
fields, the NES scheme was designed to provide the essential basic staff and a small
amount of funds with which the people could start the development work essentially
on the basis of self-help: The NES blocks were subsequently converted into CDP blocks.
From 1 April1969, the CDP was transferred from the central sector to the state sector.
The CDP had to be expanded phenomenally under political pressure and soon it
became a national programme encompassing 400 million rural people across the four
corners of the country. Consequently, both the programme as well as the inputs had
necessarily to be diluted under this abnormal rate of expansion. The CDP now covers
all the rural areas in the country.