Introduction :
We have seen almost sixty years after the Independence. In the very beginning of planned era, there has been considerable emphasis on Rural Development through progressive agriculture, better irrigation and has also included innovative methods of eradicating poverty via poverty alleviation, income and employment generating programs. As a result of all the endeavors, the agricultural production, literacy, per capita incomeand longevity of our people have recorded growth.
However, there is a big question; have our people realized the much avowed goal of a prosperous and happy life, especially the rural folk?, No doubt the ultimate goal of all process and rsultant prosparity is happiness. Are we anywhere near the achievement of this goal?, Lets pause for a while and think before leaping in to the dark cavern to enter the twenty first century.
The most relevant question is; Are we following the right strategy for achieving our main objective, that is happiness of the people?, A good strategy has to be based on weaknesses and strengths of the organisation or society at large.
In our opinion, the strategies, which has been made since independence are not enough to alleviate poverty as much as India needs. The Community Development Programe of PATH is a small step towards evolving a hiararchy of priorities for implementation and follow-up actions.
Contemporary Indian society is still undergoing a ytauma of change and is confronting a series of dilemmas and paradoxes. They hurt but they are unavoidable. It is necessary forthe society to view the problems of all catagories of its people with empathy, find solution to the problems of economic disparities and injustice, launch a programe of enlarging mass conciousness, promote a true sense of history as against subservience to myth, and initiate process of participatory decision making. While some aspects of tradition will survive because of their vitality and usefullness, many of the scaly prejudices of the past will have to be eradicated and structure of explitation and tyranny demolished. The road ahead is long, the process may be painful, but each one of us, every citizen of India has a future at stake.
During the last two centuries, centralised, over mechanised industrialism has produced in the west a social and psychological chaos that we can and must avoid. It has produced gross inequalities of wealth and power and deprived the masses of genuine independence. It has destroyed individuality and community feeling by congrageting large masses in a handful of big factories and over crowded cities. It has divorced man from his natural environment and denuded productive labour of all spontaneity, all creative, aestheticjoy. Thus it has subverted all the values associated with mans relationship to nature, to his labour, to his fellowmen, to his own self and has sown the seeds of mass neurosis. The west is now painfully extricating itself from the evil situation by means of the palliatives of welfare state, but we, in the east can radically prevent it from arising by building in a new way.
To build a new way, we require is the determination of the optimum rate of change of techniques and optimum kind of technology the basis of not only the capital cost of production involved, but also the employment effect and the other social consequences produced by different techniques. It is very naive belief indeed that this issue can and should be settled on the basis of purely economic consideration of efficiency and money costs. The specialists : e.gineers, economists or businessmen, may conveniently close their eyes to the deeper social and psychological consequences of adopting a certain technology and economic organisation but, that doesnt prevent those consequences from arising and no wise policy makers can ignore them.
Efficiency and cost curtail are not the only values, that a civilised society strives to realize and money costs are not the only costs. It is obvious that with a large amount of chronic unemployment already in our hands, we cant afford to create technological unemployment.
The countries of the west were industrialized with comparatively small populations or as in the case of the USA and Australia against the background of a large massof unemployment created in India, if these techniques are imported and imposed whole solely and when human beings are involved absolute numbers ought to be as decisive for policy making as some mathematical ratios.
No given technology is the best economically and sociologically for all societies and therefore, every society must evolve a technology suitable to its own economical and social circumstances and aspirations. So, we have to determine, wheather it should merely add itself to the collection of centralised economy, that the world is becoming or at present is i.e : the proved possibility of a decentralist pattern which make judicious use of science to eradicatepoverty without sacrificing vital human values and liberties.
Whenever we discuss the choice between small scale and large scale production, is often represented as a choice between static technique and technical improvement. But our issue is not technical improvement and non - technical improvement. the issue is about improvement of what degree?, Of what kind?, At what rate?
It has to be remembered that whereas mass production has behind it 200 years of concentrated effort on the past researches and works of scientists, capitalists and Government to improve and expand it, small scale production has only suffered systematic onslaughts by big business or, at least total neglect, where sufficient time, money scientific research are a mere fraction of the amount that have gone in to building of large industry as in Japan and Switzerland. Small industries has beaten large industries even on purely economic grounds, except in a few fields. As in Japan and Switzerland, small industry has overtakenlarge industry spectacularly on purely economic grounds, except in a few fields.
As Huxley says : Ralph Borsodis studies have shown that mass producing and mass distributing methods are technologically justified in about one third of the total production of goods. In regard to the remaining two thirds of the local production by individual or co - operative groups is more economical than mass production in vast centralised factories. Therefore, we are looking for the possibilities of a centralist pattern, which makes judicious use of science to eradicate poverty without sacrificing vital human values and liberties, as said above. Gandhi Ji presented it all his life and a growing number of sociologists present it now. It is not in a sentimental attachment to rely on the past, but a new vision of the future. i.e - the urge to foster industry on a small decentralist basis originates.
It is now known that creation of new communities is well within the political and economic means of new societies. What is not yet fully understood is how best to organise community development, how to minimize the west of human and financial resourses that often resulted from bad planning and mismanagement.
After second world war, so many communities had been developed successfully on large or small level. i.e - plan of columbia in between Baltimore and Washington in 1963. This plan had been started from 13 small housing settlements and in 9 months it had been converted in to 14000 acresbig Columbia.
PATH has no plan to keep the foundation of other Columbia, but a concerted effort is being made to give a new look to the villages and assist the people to raise themselves up from poverty and ignorance. Our Community Developement Programme lays stress on agriculture, rural and urban cottage or handicraft industry. With industrialism it has been felt, it is possible to change our villages in to Tiny - edens as envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi.


Project Locations :


Sant Nagar, Burari and Jharaunda Villages of Delhi : Self Supported
Darbhanga District of Bihar
Supported by District Rural Development Authority