Rural India A Monthly Devoted to Rural Problem March 1941

Another reason for the impotance of the problem in India is the fact that till recently the Indian intellectual aristocracy was mainly concerned with the problem of Urban Reconstruction without realising the fact that the soul of India is to be found in the villages and not in towns. [...] The goal of Raral Reconstruction in India is the rehabilitation of the Indian vilagers from the thraldom of poverty and penut v. The aim of the policy is to provide the villagers with opportunities to live a decent life. [...] To lift the villager from his exising condition to provide him with a decent start in life to educate him in the new ideas and to induce him to want more wants are the main objects of any proper scheme of Rural Reconstruction in India.2 The greatest single obstacle in the path of Rural Reconstruction in India is the illiteraQ: of the villagers. [...] The present curriculum of the village schools is full of books dead facts dates and figures dry as dust having little or no bearing on the vital interests of village life and in fact the things that costitute the greater part of village education are nothing but an imitation of the curriculum of the urban schools. [...] Apart from the major causes of failure of the Movement such as lack of co—operative spirit and education its one—sided development on the side of credit the long depression the indiscriminate and uscrupulous advancing of loans to the mebers on the basis of their total assets as opposed to their repaying capacity etc.