'Community Development Programme' was started in the year

India's community development strategy refers to an integrated, government-sponsored rural development approach that mobilises villagers' own participation alongside official machinery to simultaneously improve agriculture, health, education, communication, and local infrastructure — rather than tackling these sectors through separate, standalone schemes.

The Community Development Programme (CDP) was the first large-scale application of this approach in independent India: it was formally launched on 2 October 1952 — Gandhi Jayanti — during the First Five-Year Plan (1951-56), initially covering 55 pilot project areas across the country. This makes 1952 the year in which the programme was started.

• 1955 falls within the First Five-Year Plan period, several years before the Balwantrai Mehta Committee examined the Community Development Programme's working in 1957.

• 1957 is the year the Balwantrai Mehta Committee examined the CDP's shortcomings and recommended the three-tier Panchayati Raj system — a reform that followed the CDP, not its launch year.

• By 1960, Panchayati Raj institutions — introduced as a decentralisation reform following the Balwantrai Mehta Committee's recommendations — were already functioning in several states, so it comes after, not at, the programme's actual start.