Community Development Programme ( Sociology Optional)

Introduction

The concept of community development programmes focuses on the people centered and people led interventions, that seek to change for better, the conditions of living of these communities.

Community development programmes have three dimensions: context, creation and culmination. This trio of C’s is interrelated.

  • Context: It relate to the issues, problems, concerns of the community, the background of the community and the strengths and weaknesses of the community.
  • Creation: It means Specific programmes related to addressing the issues and concerns of the community.
  • culmination: It relate to the way the programme reaches its goals and with clear identification of people.

Concept of Community Development

  • Communities refer to people bounded in specific geographic areas and communities of interest.
  • We have moved from a predominantly agricultural and rural society to an urban industrialized society, and now to a post-industrial society.
  • Development as a concept would imply that there is progress or change for the better in such a way to enhance the security, freedom, dignity, self-reliance and self-development of groups of people.
  • Community development may be defined as a process by which the efforts of the people themselves are combined with those of governmental authorities, to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities to integrate these communities into the life of the nation and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress.
  • Community development is about influencing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives.

Community development has certain inherent values

  • Social Justice - enabling people to claim their human rights, meet their needs and have greater control over the decision-making processes, which affect their lives.
  • Participation - facilitating democratic involvement by people in the issues, which affect their lives, based on full citizenship, autonomy, and shared power, skills, knowledge and experience.
  • Equality - challenging the attitudes of individuals, and the practices of institutions and society, which discriminate against and marginalize people.
  • Co-operation - working together to identify and implement action, based on mutual respect of diverse cultures and contributions.

Assumptions in Community Development

  • Individuals, groups and local institutions within community areas share common interests that bind them together.
  • The state is a supra body that is impartial in the allocation of resources and that through its policies it does not further inequalities.
  • People’s initiatives are possible in the communities because of their common interests.
  • The interests of the various groups are not conflicting

Community development programmes and accountability

Community development programmes

  • Programmes base themselves on the involvement of people in formulating and executing those.
  • The development and use of large number of local institutions and voluntary groups.
  • Use of group work techniques
  • Development of local leadership
  • Development oriented administration rather than bureaucratic in approach.

Community Accountability

  • The concept of accountability includes two elements: ‘answerability’ of those who hold power to citizens and ‘enforceability’ of penalties in the event of failure to do so (Goetz and Jenkins 2001).

Community development programmes in rural and tribal areas

Background:

  • Community development efforts have a long history dating back to pre-independence times.
  • There were programmes like the Sevagram and Sarvodaya rural development experiments of Bombay State, Firca Development Schemes of Madras State, Pilot projects of Etawah and Gorakhpur etc.
  • These efforts were because of a desire for new techniques, new incentives and confidence to undertake development work.

Rural Community Development Programmes

It drew the inspiration and strategy from erstwhile projects of rural development in the 1920s and the international influences on community development project that developed both in the Great Britain and in America.

Main objectives:

  • To secure total development of the material and the human resources in rural areas.
  • To develop local leadership and self-governing institutions.
  • To raise the living standards of the rural people by means of rapid increase in food and agricultural produce.

Approach

  • These objectives were to be realized through a rapid increase in food and agricultural production.
  • Strengthening programmes of resource development, such as minor irrigation and soil conservation.
  • Improving the effectiveness of farm inputs supply systems.
  • Providing agricultural extension services to farmers.

Organization

  • Then the ministry of Agriculture and Rural development was in overall charge of the programme of the country. Currently the entire centrally sponsored programmes are part of the Ministry of Rural Development.

Evaluation

  • The community development programme was evaluated by a committee headed by Balwantray Mehta which gave its recommendation for a three-tier system of local governments that are popularly known as Panchayati Raj.

Criticisms

  • It has not been a people’s programme.
  • It has followed a blueprint approach to rural development.
  • It has employed a large army of untrained extension workers who lacked coordination.
  • There was lack of functional responsibility at the block level that led to a good deal of confusion and interdepartmental jealousy.

Other Programmes and the Community Component:

  • The Integrated Rural Development Programme that had conceived of rural development as that of targeting specific groups.
  • National Rural Health Mission or Elementary Education other poverty alleviation programmes as well as the mid-day meal scheme (mother’s committees to be formed).
  • The DWCRA (Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas) has been instrumental in popularizing the self-help group concept.
  • Programmes of Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY establishing a large number of microenterprises in rural areas.
  • Wage employment programmes like the Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojana and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has enabled 100 days of employment.

Tribal Community Development Programmes

Background

  • The tribal communities received some help through Special Multipurpose Tribal Development Projects (MTDPs) created towards the end of 1954.
  • Later the Community Development Blocks where the concentration of tribal population was 66% and above were converted into Tribal Development Blocks (TDBs).
  • Due to failure of this to address tribal community’s needs, Tribal Sub-Plan Strategy (TSP) was evolved for rapid socio-economic development of tribal people.
  • It is continued even now with the following objectives:
    • Overall socio-economic development of tribals and to raise them above poverty level.
    • Protection of tribals from various forms of exploitation.
  • The Government of India formed a Ministry of Tribal Affairs in 1999 to accelerate tribal development. The Ministry came out with a draft National Policy on Tribals in 2004.
  • The draft policy recognizes that most Scheduled Tribes continues to live below the poverty line. The National Policy aims at addressing each of these problems in a concrete way.
  • Many initiatives have adopted participatory approaches. One successful programme is the Andhra Pradesh Tribal Development Project.
  • The APTDP established a variety of local-level institutions, including SHGs, user groups/village development committees and a nodal institution in the form of VTDAs. It has created a multi-stakeholders approach with a specific focus on tribal people.

Contemporary Examples

  • India: Community development in India was initiated in 1952. The focus of CDP was on rural communities. But, professionally trained social workers concentrated their practice in urban areas.
  • United States: in the 1960s, the term "community development" began to complement in USA. It generally replace the idea of urban renewal, which typically focused on physical development projects often at the expense of working-class communities.
  • United Kingdom: In the UK, community development has had two main traditions. The first was as an approach for preparing for the independenceof countries from the former British Empire. The second was the community learning and development, which was adopted to acknowledge that all of these occupations worked primarily within local communities.
  • In the "Global South": Mohandas K. Gandhi adopted African community development ideals as a basis of his South African Ashram, and then introduced it as a part of the Indian Swaraj movement, aiming at establishing economic interdependence at village level throughout India.