septième réunion technique seventh technical meeting ... - IUCN

Further conclusions of the evaluation.
In a programme of community development practical achievements
play an important role in pushing activities ahead; but a change in
the outlook and spirit of the people is of vital importance if the
programme is to be made self-perpetuating and self-propelling.
Evaluation of the soil conservation project mentioned above proved
that there had been a wrong approach to the problem. As the
programme had been begun without explaining its implications to
the people who were to benefit from it and creating the necessary
confidence in them as to the efficacy of the proposed measures, their
participation was completely non-existant. Their knowledge of the
project was extremely limited, and no clear incentive was given to
them for understanding the programme. As a result of these
failings, it was decided to proceed with the programme in accordance
with the following principles :
(1) Education of the people should precede all other operations;
(2) The creation of a desire in them for the success of the
programme is essential;
(3) Sight-seeing tours help to educate the people about the
programme : so do audiovisual aids and other extension techniques;
(4) The programme should be planned in accordance with local
resources. Mechanical processes in a country like India, where
family labour is easily available and at cheap rates, fail to attract
the people's imagination;
(5)Local, trained workers are more easily able to convince their
fellows than foreign experts, who have difficulty in conveying their
ideas to them;
(6) Effective use should be made of group discussions, audiovisual
aids such as films, filmstrips, flannelgraphs, posters, charts,
etc.;
(7) A comprehensive programme of education should be worked
out, supported by a series of lessons to bring home to the farmers
the idea of employing soil conservation practices.
Taking these points into consideration, it was decided to profit
from the evaluation and switch over to another programme of soil
conservation which would avoid the earlier mistakes. The new
programme required further experimentation which was started in
one of the villages of Bhagyanagar, a district of the Pilot Development
Project, Etawah (U.P.), where half-a-dozen farmers agreed
to give 10 acres of eroded land for the purpose. This gave the
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