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8 Soc. Change 3 (1978)

handle is hein.journals/sclcnge8 and id is 1 raw text is: Social Change ; March 1978 Index of Village Development from Census Data for Punjab Victor S. D'Souza * 1. Freeman, Linton C. and Winch, Robert F., Societal Complexity; An Empirical Test of a Typology of Societies, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62, 1957, pp. 461-466. 2. Christatler, W., The Central Places in Southern Germany, 1933. (Translated by C.W. Baskin) New Jersey, 1966. 3. Fuguitt, Glen V. and Deeley, Nora Ann, Retail Service Patterns and Small Town Po- pulation Change: A Replication of Hassinger's Study, RuMlSociology. Vol 31,No. 1, March 1966, pp. 53-63. 4. Sen, Lalit K. et al, Planning Rural Growth Centmes for fntegraed Area Development. Hydermbad: National Institute of Community Development, 1971, pp. 80.88. *The author expresses his thanks to Raj Mphi- ni Sethi arnd Sarita Kamra for statistical assistance. Broadly speaking development is a continuous movement in a desired direction. Insofar as the village is a community, the development of a village refers to a continuous movement in a complex set of variables which have to do with the quality oflife of its people. Since what is meant by quality of life is a subjective concept, it is difficult to arrive at an objective definition of the development of village or community. Any such definition, therefore, has to be guided by practical considerations. The present study is concerned with the derivation of an index of village development for the State of Punjab by utilising the information available in the census reports. The purpose of the index is to enable one to make systematic comparison among villages with regard to the level of their development. Hitherto such comparisons have been made in terms of population size, literacy level or percentage of non-agricultural occupations. Whereas each of these variables is related to the degree of development of villages, it is not a satisfactory index of the quality of life of the villagers. On the other hand, under the section of Village Directory, the District Census Handbooks provide information about some of the amenities relating to health, . education, communication, etc., which has a more direct bearing on the quality of life. Several such amenities taken together, therefore, would provide us with a better index of village development. But since these amenities refer to qualitatively different aspects of social life they are not commensurable for pre'aring a composite yardstick for systematic comparison. All the same they can still be used for quantification if it can be demonstrated that they follow a certain pattern of development. Sociologists who have studied the growing complexity of societies, have observed. that as societies grow from simple to complex form they acquire new social characteristics in a systematic manner. A certain set of social characteristics appear in a unilinear sequence corresponding to a developmental dimension Such characteristics are found in societies of varying degrees of complexity, in accordance with the scalogram pattern. This principle has been made use of for devising a Guttman-type scale of societal complexity for purposes of systematic comparison among societies.' A similar trend has been observed in the accumulation of different types of services in communities. Beginning with Christaller2 a number of scholars concerned with the geographical location of communities have testified to it. By and large, the larger the size of a community, the wider the hinterland served by it. Consequently the number of different types of services provided varies according to the size of the community. The types of services themselves form a grad d order such that a community of a given size besides containing all the types of services found in relatively smaller-sized communities would also contain some higher order service not found in the latter. Thus, the appearance of the different types of services as well as their occurrence in communities of different sizes follows a unilinear sequence. For example Fuguitt and Deeley2 have constructed a Guttman Scale out of a set of retail trade items for the villages of Wisconsin. U.S.A. In India also a detailed study of the distribution of services in the villages of two community development blocks in a district of Andhra Pradesh shows that a relatively large number of services - over twenty in each block - form a Guttman Scale.' The various amenities in villages listed in the Village Directories of the District Census Handbooks, are comparable with the community services or functions measured by urban geographers with the technique of scalogram analysis. Digitized from Best Copy Available 3

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