ABSTRACT
Historically, community development (as a local level social development approach) originated in developing countries during the colonial times to
promote both the social and economic development of communities (see Midgley 1995). In the 1950s, the United Nations played an important role in advocating the community development approach for developing countries. According to Korten (1980), a Ford Foundation funded project in the Etawah District of Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1948 led to a certain chain of events which brought community development into prominence in the post-colonial era. Due to the remarkable success of the project, in 1952 the Indian government adopted the concept of community development as the basis of national rural development efforts. Following the Indian government’s national approach, sixty countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America adopted community development programs in the 1950s. Although the national level community development program was very close to the heart of self-reliant and self-managed Indian village lifestyle, it utterly failed because of several factors: namely resistance, the use of state benefi ts by elites from village to upper levels, lack of access to villages, lack of coordination among inter-ministerial bureaucracies, an over-emphasis on social services, centrally led bureaucratic and reporting procedures, and a lack of involvement of communities and of their linkages to higher level regional units (see analysis by Korten 1980). In addition, as the nation building priority was dominated by centrally led economic growth and development, little room was provided for community development practice. In the mid 1960s, most community development programs were terminated or drastically reduced. From his analysis Korten (1980) concludes: “Community development had promised much, yet delivered little”.
