UN General Assembly
1956

99. Our country has made great progress in what is called community development, to which the Secretary-General draws pointed attention in his report. Out of the 600,000 villages of India, 130,000 are covered by what has been called an experiment, but what is now part of our administrative and political system, whereby the villages have come into an entire, integral relationship with the central and State governments and in social political and economic organization. This part of our development has attracted the attention of the United Nations, and is to a very considerable extent now being studied by other South-East Asian countries, and we hope that in the next five years all the 600,000 villages of India, where 80 per cent of its population lives, will be covered in this way.