Fundamentals of Extension Education

Community Development Programme

DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY
A community consists of persons in social interaction within a geographical area and having one or more additional communities.

Definition of Community Development: Here are few of the many definitions of the term.
Community development is a movement designed to promote better living for the whole community with the active participation and on the initiative of the community.
• Community Development is a balance programme for stimulating the local potential for growth in every direction. Its promise of reciprocal advance in both wealth and welfare, not on the basis of outside charity but by building on the latent vitality of the beneficiaries themselves with the minimum of outside aid.
• Community Development is technically-aided and locally organized self-help.
• The term "Community Development" has come into international usage to denote the process by which th be efforts of the people themselves are united with those of governmental authorities to improve the economic, social and cultural condition of the communities to integrate these communities in the life of the nation and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress.
• Community development is the term used to describe the technique many governments has adopted to reach their village people and to make more effective of local initiative and energy community organize themselves for planning; make group and individual plants to meet their needs and solve their problems; execute these plants with a maximum of reliance upon community resources; and supplement these resources when necessary, with services & materials from governmental & non-governmental agencies outside the community.
• Both the method & process: community development is considered to be method as well as process. It is the method of helping local communities to become more aware of there needs to assess their resources more realistically, to organize themselves & resources in such a way as to satisfy some of their needs through occasional projects so that villagers are unable to their own efforts to move steadily towards the goal of self-improvement.

MEANING
The CDP was launched in India on 2"d October, 1952 with 55 community development project (CDPS). Each project had on operational area to 500 square miles, comprising 300 villages and a population of about 2lakhs. The project area was divided into 3 development blocks, each consisting of about 100 villages and a population of 60-70 thousand. The project was headed by a Project Officer, and a number of subject maser Extension Officers in the disciplines of agriculture, animal husbandry, cooperation, industries, rural engineering, social education etc.
• Each project had about 60 multi-purpose village level workers (VLWs), one for each group of 5 to 10 villages. They were government appointed extension functionary at the lowest level, who were nearest to the departments engaged in rural development work. The people in all the project area responded enthusiastically and the need for a rapid expansion of the programme to other parts of the country was urgently felt. Limited resources, however, did not permit a rapid expansion of the CD projects.
• A year later, in 1953 the national extension service (NES) programme was launched with the idea of having wider coverage at less cost and more people's participation. Each NES block was headed by a block development officer (BDO) and had a number of extensions of officers (Eos). For the NES block funds were drastically reduced and the number of multipurpose VLWs was brought to 10.
• It was a major development in the share in rural reconstruction in India. Since the basic idea underlying both CD and NES programs was the same, the two were integrated under one agency at the centre as well as in the state. Both the programmes were complementary and interwoven and concurrently. NES was viewed as the permanent setup for extension in the content & it was intended to cover the entire country with an organization for agriculture & rural development within a period of about 10 years.
• The momentum gained by the NES programme was intensified by converting some selected NES block to CDP. The programme was initiated in 1954. The NES blocks which produced good results and where peoples participation had been in abundance, were selected for the purpose.

Top