Maharashtra-Mini-Emergencies

November 26, 1977 of any long-term objectives. The change of government has made no difference.
The Janata government has conformed to the style of its predecessor also in its penchant for substituting 'labels' for actual change. Renaming peons as officers class IV or class III railway travel as class II are frequently-quoted examples of transformation through change of labels attempted by the previous government. The practice of substituting one label for another has been most pronounced in the agricultural sector. We started with the Community Development Programme, which in practice meant development for a few. This arrangement got formalised under the new labels of Intensive Agriculture District Programme (IADP), Intensive Agriculture Area Programme, (IAAP) and finally, the HYV-based new agricultural strategy. When these programmes, explicitly designed to favour the well endowed, failed to extend beyond their logical limits, the farmers' ignorance of the new technology was projected as the principal culprit. 'Demonstrations', the familiar tool of extension, therefore, came into prominence under the National Demonstration Programme. Again, being large-farmer-centred and subsidy-centred, the programme failed to have the desired effect. So came the new label of Operations Research Project, ostensibly to ensure a better link between research and the farm, Programmes for the poor too have not escaped the labelling game. Traditional employment-oriented activities were labelled 'rural works programme', 'crash employment programme', 'food for work programme' and, lately, 'employment guarantee scheme'. Programmes of soil conservation, cattle/dairy development, handicraft development, etc, were paraded under new labels like Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP) and Small Farmers Development Agency (SFDA), etc. Not satisfied, the National Commission on Agri- culture called for the 'Whole Village Development' approach. This was further supplemented by labels like 'integrated rural development' and 'development on watershed basis'. One wonders how these approaches differ in essence from the old community development programme.