Community Participation

Abstract

The decade of the seventies began to generate a critique of the dominant development paradigm which was practiced in the countries of the North after the second World War and adopted in the newly independent countries of the South in the fifties and the sixties. The experiences of the fifties and the sixties has demonstrated the fundamental weakness of the top-down, GNP-focused, growth-centred strategy of development based on professional expertise and modernising technologies. The critique of this strategy of development was developed from the experiences in a variety of sectors in the countries of the South in general, and in India in particular. The critique was applied to education, social welfare, health, agriculture, etc. With the convening of the 'Health for All by the Year 2000 in the mid seventies the focus of health care delivery shifted from expertise and high technology to what came to be known as primary health care. The cornerstone of this approach of primary health care, according to the declarations of Alma Atal and subsequent reports of a variety of committees and studies, was proclaimed as community participation.