A review of various rural development programmes and policies fol lowed in India after independence, reveal the following four strategies of development.3
Holistic and Equity-oriented Strategy
Agricultural and rural development have been accorded a high priority in India’s fi ve year plans. The First Five Year Plan was dominated by the Community Development
Programme (CDP), which refl ected India’s overriding con cern with nation building and equity. The major strategy underlying the CDP was holistically designed to simultaneously achieve the goals of growth, welfare, equity and community participation. This paradigm takes a very comprehensive but integrated view of the basic problems of poverty, un- employment and inequality, and seeks to address the physical, economic, technological, social, motivational, organisational and political bases of these problems. The multiple goals of this strategy are sought to be achieved by build ing the capacity of the com- munity to involve itself in development in partnership with the government. The critical assumption underlying this approach is that the government can restructure the societal power relationships, and centralised bureaucracies can learn to share power with community groups. Successful implementation of this strategy requires complex decentralised matrix structures, with permanent mechanisms for vertical and lateral integration, a combination of specialist and generalist skills, institutional leadership, social intervention capability and systems management (Ickis 1983: Chapter 1). Some other programmes launched after the CDP, such as the Integrated Rural Development Pro gramme (IRDP), National Rural Employment Programme (NREP), and Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment (TRYSE), were intended to follow this paradigm. But given the existing organisational structure and governance system in India, which does not have many of the prerequisites discussed earlier for the successful implementation of this strategy, this strategy did not yield the desired results.
Growth-oriented Strategy
By the middle of the Second Five Year Plan, it became increasingly evident that whatever the success of the CDP, a new approach would be required if agricul tural production was to stay ahead of the demands of India’s mounting population. In 1957–58, India faced its fi rst post-independence food cri sis. In response to this crisis, and on the basis of the recommendations of the Ford Foundation-sponsored Team of American Agri- cultural Pro duction Specialists, a new programme called the Intensive Agriculture District Programme (IADP), or Package Programme, was formulated and launched in seven selected districts in the country in 1960–61, and was later extended to eight more districts.
The IADP represented a signifi cant departure from the CDP, in that it employed the concentration principle in deploying resources, as opposed to the equity criterion of the CDP. Its main objective was to achieve rapid increases in agricultural production through the use of complementary inputs and services (package approach) at the farm level. Farm plan ning formed the core of IADP. By 1966, the basic concept of concen tration, and the effective use and better management of resources had gained national acceptance, and a number of new agricultural development pro grammes, such as the Intensive Agricultural Area Programme (IAAP), the High Yielding Varieties Programme (HYVP) and the Intensive Cattle Development Programme (ICDP) had been patterned like the IADP. All these programmes were growth oriented; they did not address themselves to
equity issues. They demonstrated, on one hand, the effectiveness of the concentration principle in achieving rapid increases in food produc tion, and on the other hand, the failure of the growth-oriented strategy to solve the basic problems of rural poverty and income inequality. The most important lesson learned from the experience with these programmes was that a rising economic growth rate was no guarantee against wors- ening poverty, and that a direct frontal attack on the basic problems of poverty and unemployment was called for.
Welfare-oriented Strategy
This seeks to promote the well-being of the rural population in general, and the rural poor in particular, through large-scale social programmes like the Minimum Needs Programme (MNP), Applied Nutrition Programme (ANP), Mid-day Meals Programme (MMP), National Old Age Pension Programme (NOAPP), and so on. The primary means used in this strategy are free provision/distribution of goods, services and civic amenities in rural areas. The critical assumptions of this strategy are that people are not com petent to identify and resolve their problems, and that government spe cialists can identify their needs and meet them with the fi nancial and administrative resources available with the government. The role of villagers is that of passive receptors of services. This strategy has a paternnalistic orientation. The performance of the programmes is judged by the quantity of goods, services and civic amenities delivered. The wel fare-oriented programmes present a mixed picture; the rural poor have benefi ted signifi cantly through some programmes in a few areas but not in others. There are three major criticisms of this strategy:
1. It has created dependence.
2. It requires resources that are beyond the means of governments.
3. It has opened the doors for large-scale corruption among those responsible for delivering welfare benefi ts.
Facilitating and Participatory Strategy
This is aimed at helping rural people help themselves through their own organisations, active participation and other support systems. Its concern is with responding to the felt needs of the rural people as defi ned by them. The role of the government is to facilitate the self-help efforts of the villagers by pro viding technologies and resources that are not locally available. The critical assumption of this strategy is that the rural poor will identify and resolve their problems if provided with minimal support, and otherwise left to their own devices and initiatives. Community participation in—and control of—project activities is the primary performance indicator of this strategy. India’s Operation Flood (OF), which was launched in 1970 in 18 milksheds in 10 states, is a good example of this
strategy. OF aimed at modernising and developing India’s dairy industry through a three-tier structure of Anand pattern dairy cooperatives. Many voluntary agencies are also following this paradigm of development.
To conclude we could say that what is needed now is an integrated or holistic strategy which combines all the positive features of the earlier four strategies, and which is implemented faithfully through the creation of an appropriate organisational and institutional framework.