S. K. Dey
| S. K. Dey | |
|---|---|
| List of Former Members of Rajya Sabha | |
|
In office 31/01/1957–01/03/1962 |
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| Preceded by | Surinder Kumar Dey |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Surinder Kumar Dey 15 September 1905 Laxmibassa village, Bangladesh |
| Died | 1989 (aged 83–84) |
| Profession | Social engineer, author, scientist, |
S. K. Dey (1905-1989) was India’s first Union Cabinet minister for Cooperation and Panchyati Raj. Mr. Dey is remembered as the man who pioneered and steered community development in independent India. He firmly believed that democracy cannot be practiced by government servants and stressed that the fruits of democracy ought to reach every village.
S. K. Dey was born on 13 September in Laxmibassa village in present-day Bangladesh, Mr. Dey went on to study engineering at world-renowned institutions- Purdue University and Michigan in the United States of America. He began his career by serving as the Honorary Technical Advisor to the Ministry of Rehabilitation, Government of India (1948–51). It was in this post that Mr. Dey proved his mettle as a “social engineer” and was noticed by top government, including then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Mr. Dey’s vitality and commitment to developing grassroots democracy prompted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to hand over the reins of Rural Development in newly independent India to Mr. Dey. After Nehru’s death, Mr. Dey resigned from the ministry and dedicated his time to build Panchayati Raj institutions in the country. As minister, his pet project was the Community Development Programme (1953) which would later form the basis of Community Development Blocks across the country. Mr. Dey’s concept of community development was rooted in his belief that the community could help itself rather than looking “towards the government as Mai-Baap.” Mr. Dey’s model of community development is characterized by a three-pronged strategy- development of the area, coordinated administration and development of the individual and the community. The first Community Development Project was undertaken in Etawah U.P in 1948. During 1952, 55 such projects were taken up across the country. Taking their success into account, the Community Development Programme was scaled up to all blocks in the country.
In 1949, Mr. Dey designed the concept of an agro-industrial township for rural development. The thrust of this model was its focus on a combination of agriculture and industrial development. The township would be provided support in terms of goods and services by surrounding villages. It would be self-sufficient and function on the basis of cooperation.This model materialized as the “Mazdoori Manzil” project in 1950, in Nilokheri, Haryana. The project benefitted 7000 homeless refugees from Pakistan. Mr. Dey considered this model to be welfare state in action. Impressed with the model, Nehru termed it to be the “Mecca of Development” and called for the creation of many more Nilokher is across the country. Unfortunately, over the years, Nilokheri has been lost to obscurity and lacks even basic facilities such as health, water and education. S.K. Dey appears to have been influenced, on the one hand, by Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan experiment for Rural Development and, on the other, by the Gandhian idea of Rural Construction which laid stress on self sufficiency and manual labour. It could also be perceived as a Model of Rural Development based on a synthesis of Liberalism, Marxism and Gandhi-ism. Its emphasis on individual liberty seems to have been imbibed from Liberalism, stress on right and duty to work from Marxism and that of small scale cottage and village industries from Gandhi-ism.
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