Integrated rural development programmes: A historical perspective

The pervasive poverty in rural areas has represented a continuing concern of national governments and development assistance agencies. One response to pervasive poverty has been the design of local institutions to enable rural communities to mobilize their own resources to generate growth and improve the quality of life. Programmes organized under the rubric of ‘community development’ were a major focus of development assistance during the 1950s and early 1960s. During the early 1970s concern about the distributional implications of economic growth again emerged as a major theme in development thought and development policy. This concern gave rise to two new development assistance approaches — ‘integrated rural development’ and ‘basic needs’ programmes. In this paper, I attempt to trace the development, accomplishments and limitations of the community development, integrated rural development and basic needs approaches.