Rural Development Based on Grassroots Participation

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The experience of rural development in the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement (SSM) in Sri Lanka is analyzed from the viewpoint of grassroots participation.It was not until the late 1960s that rural development became a paramount issue in the discussion of development problems. Most of the past efforts however have shown rather poor results except the production effects of the Green Revolution technology; Sri Lanka is not an exception to this. Though the country is famous for the growth-with-justice strategy employed by successive governments, the rural poor have not yet fully benefited from the recent central decision to accelerate economic growth. The clue to successful rural development is to be found in grassroots participation.SSM has established an international reputation as a non-governmental organization involved in helping the poor help themselves. A brief description of its history, which reveals that more than one third of the total village communities in the country have already received the Sarvodaya message in one degree or another, is followed by a closer look at the development activities of the Sarvodaya village. They include various fields such as education, training, health, agriculture, local small-scale industries, all of which are oriented toward satisfying the Ten Basic Needs defined by SSM. The remarkable rural mobilization in SSM can be attributed to the fact that the movement has, since its inception in 1958, evolved the Buddhist notion of development as well as the practical strategy to realize it in the Sri Lankan rural context. Both are thus derived from the cultural tradition of the people there and familiar to them, resulting in having become instrumental in promoting mass participation. SSM's approach to rural development may therefore appear to evoke the potential energy of collective creativity with which the village community is endowed.