Study of social change among the schedule castes: the role of government sponsored programmes

Every developing society, a large proportion of their population resides in rural areas and belongs to poorer sections of the society. It is because of this reason that most of the development programmes are geared up to mainly the deprived regions and social groups of population. This has been the strategy perused by most developing societies, mainly during the 1950s and 1960s. These societies are confronted with two major problems: poverty and unemployment. They are seriously engaged in search of the solutions to these twin problems. The decades of the 1950s and 1960s are the period of over-optimism in the mind of the policy makers to increase productivity, per capita income, job opportunities and uniform growth through the planned programmes of development. They have succeeded to the extent that most programmes have generally benefited the rich and local elites. The gap between the rich and the poor at all levels and in all sectors has increased. The economic growth, even when achieved, did not 'trickle down' to the poorest sections and to the rural sector of the society. The number of poor, inequalities of income, land, resources and access to services have increased. By the mid-1970s it became necessary to rethink about the growth pattern in productivity, employment, and income, sectoral progress, and distributive justice.