Community Development and the first panchayati raj (1952-1977)

Detail

1. Starting point: local government in the original Constitution

• In 1950, local government was not a separate, protected level of government.
• It appeared only in Article 40, a Directive Principle of State Policy (a guideline for the government that no court can enforce). Article 40 asks the State to organise village panchayats and give them the powers they need to work as units of self-government.
• So whether panchayats lived, and how strong they were, depended on each state's own law. This weakness runs through the whole 1952–1977 story.

2. The Community Development Programme (CDP), 1952

• Community Development Programme (CDP): a government programme for all-round rural development (farming, roads, health, schooling, co-operatives), meant to be done with the villagers and not just for them.
• It began on 2 October 1952 (Gandhi Jayanti) with 55 projects.
• It built on the Etawah pilot project (1948) in Uttar Pradesh.

• Its goal was people's participation in rural development.

• Community development block: the area unit of the CDP. It was a group of villages, smaller than a district. The block is still the middle level of rural administration today.

• Class 11 NCERT (Ch 8) calls the CDP the first effort in independent India to involve local people in development.

3. National Extension Service and the BDO

• National Extension Service (NES), 1953: a network of extension officers, meaning field workers who took new farming methods and other government schemes out to the villages. Through the NES, development work spread to blocks across the country.
• Block Development Officer (BDO): a state government officer in charge of each block. The BDO runs the block's office, staff and schemes.
• The built-in problem:
• Plans came from above, through the BDO and extension staff.
• Villagers received these plans but had little say in them.
• So participation stayed weak, which defeated the CDP's main purpose.

4. The Balwantrai Mehta Committee (1957)

• Why it was set up: people were taking little part in the CDP and NES. The government needed to know why, and how to fix it.
• Appointed: January 1957. Report: November 1957.
• Official name: Team for the Study of Community Projects and National Extension Service. The team was headed by Balwantrai Mehta [4][2].
• Main idea, "democratic decentralisation": give real power and resources to elected local bodies, not just to government officers.
• The government should hand over certain duties completely to an elected body that would run all development work in its area. The government would keep only guidance, supervision and higher planning [2].

Three-tier structure recommended

Tier	Level	How chosen	Role
Village panchayat	Village	Directly elected by villagers	Basic unit at the village level
Panchayat samiti	Block	Indirectly elected (members come from the panchayats below)	Key executive body that carries out development work
Zila parishad	District	Indirectly constituted; chaired by the Collector	Advisory and coordinating body only

• All three tiers together: the committee said that, for the best results, all three tiers should start at the same time and work side by side across the whole district [2].
• Real transfer: power and resources had to be genuinely handed over. A change of name alone would not do.

5. Acceptance and first states

• National Development Council (NDC) (the body of the Prime Minister, Union ministers and state Chief Ministers that approves national plans) accepted the scheme in 1958.
• Rajasthan was first: on 2 October 1959, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated panchayati raj at Nagaur [3]. Rajasthan's law was passed in 1959 and set up three levels of local government based on elected village panchayats [5].
• Andhra Pradesh followed in 1959.
• States that changed the model:
• Maharashtra (1962) and Gujarat (1963) made the zila parishad, not the samiti, the executive tier.

• So from the start the states did not follow one uniform pattern.

• Class 11 NCERT says these states adopted elected local bodies "around 1960".

6. Decline from the mid-1960s

Problems listed in Class 11 NCERT (Ch 8):

• Local bodies lacked powers and functions.
• They depended on state and central grants and had little money of their own.
• States often dissolved them and handed them to officials.
• Many bodies were indirectly elected.
• Elections were postponed again and again.

Deeper causes

• Bureaucratic control:
• The BDO and line departments kept running the blocks.
• Elected members had to follow officials' lead.

• So the samiti was never the real executive it was meant to be.

• Elite and caste capture:

• Rich landowners and dominant castes won most seats.
• Dalits, women and the poor were left out.

• So the bodies often protected local power instead of spreading it.

• Weak finance: without a fixed share of taxes, panchayats could not plan anything for themselves.

• Parallel agencies (1980):
• Target-based schemes such as the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) (a scheme giving loans and subsidies to poor rural families) were run through District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs).
• DRDAs were official bodies that worked outside the panchayats.

• So money and work bypassed elected local bodies.

• End of this period: the Ashok Mehta Committee was appointed in 1977 and reported in 1978. It opened the next stage of reform.

7. How these failures shaped the 73rd Amendment (1992)

Each failure from 1952–1977 led to a matching safeguard in the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 (in force 24 April 1993).

Failure (1960s–80s)	73rd Amendment remedy
Bodies dissolved at the state's will	Fixed five-year term; if dissolved early, a fresh election within six months
Elections postponed	Compulsory regular elections
Elections run by the state government	Independent State Election Commission (SEC)
No money of their own	State Finance Commission every five years
Elite and caste capture	Reservation of seats for SCs, STs and women (at least one-third)
Vague functions	Eleventh Schedule listing 29 subjects

Prelims Hooks

• CDP launched 2 October 1952 with 55 projects; its pilot was Etawah (UP), 1948.
• National Extension Service dates from 1953, not 1952.
• Balwantrai Mehta Committee: appointed January 1957, reported November 1957. Its official name was the Team for the Study of Community Projects and National Extension Service.
• Mehta's executive tier was the panchayat samiti (block). The zila parishad was only advisory and was chaired by the Collector. This is a common trap.
• Only the village panchayat was to be directly elected. The samiti and zila parishad were indirect.
• NDC accepted the scheme in 1958.
• First state: Rajasthan, at Nagaur, 2 October 1959, inaugurated by Nehru. Second: Andhra Pradesh (1959).
• Maharashtra (1962) and Gujarat (1963) made the zila parishad the executive tier.
• DRDAs (1980) ran IRDP outside the panchayats. This was a cause of PRI decline.
• Article 40 (a Directive Principle) was the only constitutional basis for panchayats before 1992.

Mains Points

• Top-down development defeats participation: the CDP was run by the BDO and extension staff. It treated villagers as receivers, not decision-makers. This shows that development without devolution does not produce participation, a lesson for today's centrally run schemes (GS-II).
• Without constitutional protection, local democracy was at the mercy of the states: because PRIs rested only on Article 40 and state laws, states could dissolve them, delay elections and take back powers. This argues for the 73rd Amendment's fixed term, compulsory elections and SEC (GS-II).
• Parallel bodies vs elected bodies: DRDAs and line departments pulled money and work away from panchayats. The same tension exists today between scheme-specific committees and gram panchayats. Reform means merging these structures with PRIs and giving them untied funds.
• Decentralisation can strengthen local elites: the 1960s capture by dominant castes shows that handing power down is not enough without reservation, gram sabha oversight and social audit (GS-I post-1947 history and GS-II).