AKHTER HAMEED KHAN was born in 1914, the eldest son of a cultured Muslim family. He attended Government High School at Jalam, United Provinces, and took his Intermediate Examination at Agra College in history, logic and English literature in 1930. At Meerut College he continued his study of history, philosophy and English literature, receiving his B.A. degree in 1932. His brother remembers young AKHTER with spectacles to correct his weak eyesight and "a very fat book" in his hand, even while eating. "I cannot exist without my books," was his good-spirited explanation, "they are essential for me as food."

By manner contemplative and restrained of speech, he was from college days a non-conformist, habitually questioning accepted premises. "Why should I believe in the old dogmas of my religion if they are against logic?" he would typically argue. Methodical in habit he was prepared nonetheless to alter his plans as his learning broadened. In his "search of truth" he was thorough, painstaking, and widely read. Early conversant in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali and English, he also learned Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit to gain insight from great works in those languages. Believing in spiritual evolution, he at one time followed the teachings of the Buddha and at another time sought to apply the practical materialism of Darwin.

Upon receiving his M.A. degree in English literature from Agra University in 1934, instead of competing for the elite Indian Civil Service as did most young men of his promise, he chose a lectureship at Meerut College. In 1936, however, he competed successfully for the Indian Civil Service and was sent to study for the next two years at Maudline College, Cambridge University, England, as part of his training. He continued to immerse himself in religious studies, to the confusion and dismay of family and friends.

From his first posting in 1938 as Assistant Magistrate in Comilla, then Tripura State, India, his official life was stormy and full of heartache. His simplicity in dress and living was censured by his superiors. An idealist, he sought while in government service to do the impossible of bringing about an Islamic revolution in the lives of the Muslim inhabitants of the area. Deeply moved by the misery of the ignorant masses, KHAN was angered by his own helplessness and by government indifference. He was also caught up emotionally in India's struggle to be free.

Contributing to his restlessness in government service was his marriage in 1939 to Hamida Mashraqui, whose father was founder and leader of the Khaksar Party, a semi-military political organization of pre-partition India. Friendly and full of vigor, she had been reared in a practical and plain atmosphere in the Punjab and found the demands of official life uncongenial.

Next posted to Netrokana, Mymensingh, as Sub-Divisional Officer, KHAN’s modest manner of living was again criticized. "The other officers suffer by contrast," a senior officer admonished him in 1943. In protest KHAN requested a long leave but was recalled at once for it was the year of a great famine. Increasingly sensitive to wartime oppression and injustices, the opportunity to do much work for destitutes did not alter his conviction, fortified by the study of Sufi literature and Tolstoy, that the life of a civil servant was not creative. He wrote in his diary, "I want to lead the life of a poor man."

During his summer vacation in 1944 he studied Arabic and Islamic jurisprudence at Madrasatul-Ulum in Deoband, United Provinces. Then, resigning from the civil service, he moved his family to Mamoola, a small village on the outskirts of Aligarh in United Provinces to take up his experiment in poverty. In a small rented house he started life as a farmer with a goat and a buffalo cow. Though he labored hard, the scheme did not work well. Forced to find another means of livelihood, he turned to lock making. After six months apprenticeship he organized a cooperative karkhana, or workshop, where lock buckles were made. His brother found a new harshness in his behavior that reflected the hard struggle to earn a living through rough but honest labor. At the same time he took an increasing interest in the Khaksar Movement and Radiance, its English language weekly. Following the manager's death, he took over the paper's management. His karkhana became an encumbrance and was sold to permit him more time for Khaksar politics.

In late 1947 KHAN became Headmaster of the Secondary School of the Jamia Millia Islamia, a famed educational experiment in Delhi, but in response to the need for teachers in the new Pakistan, he left India in August 1950 and moved to Karachi to take up a post as lecturer in Islamic history and English literature at Islamia College. Eight months later he accepted the invitation of the Government of East Pakistan to become Principal of Comilla Victoria College in Comilla and remained in this position until early 1958.

He served as President of the East Pakistan Non-Government Teachers' Association for several terms between 1950 and 1958 and was frequently invited to preside over provincial and district conferences, though his addresses consistently called for greater emphasis on character development by example and were marked by their candor in supporting unpopular ideas. "We talk too much about an Islamic state, an Islamic constitution, and too little about an Islamic character," he declared at a district Secondary School Teachers' Conference in 1950. "The most important part of education is formation of good character; all else is subsidiary, and character is formed not by precept but by example. . . ." At an East Bengal Teachers' Conference in 1952 he commented: "A more conscious and concerted effort will have to be made to bring the school training more in line with the village environment. The fact that our main economic activity is agriculture, and not government service, is at present quite forgotten. . . ."

In 1958 speaking to the East Pakistan Teachers' Association's Annual Conference on educational trends he warned:

"If all our school boys are not well grounded in scientific studies we will remain backward, inefficient and poverty-stricken. And if our school boys learn only to despise and hate the English language we will soon be gnashing our teeth in outer darkness.

"But the most dangerous trend which deepens the academic crisis and fills me with gloom is the common disinclination to work hard, the desire for ease, concessions, a general lightening of burdens. . . ."

In late 1954 AKHTER HAMEED KHAN was seconded to serve as Provincial Administrator for the first year of the new Village Agricultural and Industrial Development Administration (Village-AID) program for East Pakistan. This program was developed to give special attention to agriculture which had been neglected in the First Five-Year Plan. Five Village-AID Training Institutes were established in East Pakistan to provide one year courses for extension workers who would be trained as agricultural generalists. The trainees, mostly middle-rank administrators drawn from the national and provincial civil services, knew little of the concepts and less of the social scientific techniques needed to bring about change in the villages. When KHAN returned to his position as Principal at Comilla Victoria College after his year with the program he called attention to this basic flaw.

Acting to correct this problem, the government in August 1956 decided to establish two Academies for Village Development, one at Peshawar for West Pakistan and the other at Comilla for East Pakistan, to insure proper training of future village workers. In June 1957 the final plans were formulated; financial contributions were to come from four sources. The government of Pakistan would provide and pay the salaries of faculty, administrative and clerical staffs, with the central government bearing 75 per cent of these costs and the provincial governments 25 per cent. The Ford Foundation would make grants for dollar expenses required to build and equip the two academies, to train faculty in the United States and elsewhere and to pay salaries and expenses of advisory staff. Michigan State University would advise on curriculum, train faculty members and furnish advisers to the two academies in initial years. The U.S. Agency for International Development would pay the transportation and per diem of faculty members when they visited community development projects abroad as part of their training. Invited to be the directors of the two academies were Raja Mohammad Afzal Khan for Peshawar and AKHTER HAMEED KHAN for Comilla.

In September 1957, out of several hundred applications received and processed by a joint committee of Pakistani-American educators, 10 faculty members for each academy were appointed on a probationary basis to teach Public Administration, Social Psychology, Rural Sociology and Applied Anthropology, Rural Economics, Rural Business Management, Community Organization, and Communication and Education. One coordinator of special training and agricultural extension programs, and one specialist and an associate in survey and research were also hired.

In mid-1958 the group spent three weeks on orientation visits to Village-AID Training Institutes and in observing Village-AID workers in action before going to Michigan State University to study current theories and techniques of their respective disciplines, and to round out their academic backgrounds. Later group and individual inspections were made of development programs in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Jamaica, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Returning to Pakistan in May 1959 the group again visited several Village-AID Institutes and observed field work before dividing to prepare the curriculum best suited for each academy.

To direct this program Director KHAN brought a broad preparation. His previous experience in high and low estate and his depth of learning had given him dedication, competence, rare insight and sincere humility. Behind the comprehensive pilot project in rural modernization which developed in the next two years at Comilla were his vision and strong belief that the village peasant could rise to lead himself. To the poor people he emanated a sympathy and attachment which they appreciated and reciprocated. His colleagues credit their success to date largely to his energy and ability to inspire group action.

The first class, begun in August 1959, was in keeping with the Academy's defined primary function of training government and semi-governmental personnel in the dynamics of development administration. Meanwhile, the Director and his staff began a systematic study of the causes of the admitted failure in the agricultural sector of the First Five-Year Plan. Between August 1959 and January 1960 they visited villages, interviewed representative groups, attended regular fortnightly meetings of Village-AID workers, and made case studies of successful farmers, officers of cooperatives and artisans and carefully recorded opinions and suggestions.

Director KHAN concluded that the most effective way to find suitable institutions to carry out rural development was to test on a pilot basis solutions suggested by research. If trials in a few villages justified broader application, the Academy would ask approval from the government for use of Comilla Kotwali Thana as their experimental area.

Comilla Kotwali Thana was an agricultural area of some 107 square miles lying along the eastern border of the vast alluvial plain that comprised most of East Pakistan. A kotwali (headquarters) thana (police station), or administrative sub-district, was considered small enough to be manageable yet large enough to be meaningful as a laboratory.

The one small city, Comilla, had some 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the Gunti River about 100 miles north of Chittagong, the main port of East Pakistan, and 40 miles southeast of Dacca, the provincial capital, it had air, rail and road communication, but the river was too shallow for any but the lightest of commerce. Comilla was the district and thana seat and the many government offices attracted business, but the city had no major industry. It was the service center for the surrounding area and formerly had a lively commerce in produce to and from the hills to the east which were now Indian territory. Partition in 1947 had also caused severe problems for villagers who depended upon gathering firewood, thatching grass and bamboo, and on pasturing their cattle and goats in the now Indian uplands, and selling rice and vegetables to hill dwellers.

The Academy group found that most of' the 400 villages in the thana were those of cultivators, with a few villages where weaving, potting and other crafts were the sole source of income. Population had outstripped food production in East Pakistan a generation ago; at the time of the Academy study about 10 per cent of the foodstuffs had to be imported. This population pressure was manifested acutely in the rural area of Comilla where some 1,600 people lived within one square mile. The average family holding was one and seven-tenths acres and this land was usually fragmented, with one family farming small plots in several locations. The people were deeply in debt—a typical family owed over Rs.1,000 (US$214) at interest rates of from 80 to 100 per cent, which meant one-half of every crop was pledged to the moneylender. Four-fifths of the villagers were illiterate and many of the rest had only limited literacy. Life expectancy was less than 40 years.

Agricultural methods had changed little in a thousand years. Crops were produced by hand and bullock labor. A head-and-shoulder load was the customary method of hauling manure to the fields and farm products from scattered fields to housesites. Many villages had no access roads—nor a wheel of any kind. The society was tradition-bound and only beginning to emerge from a rigid feudalism. Purdah (restricting women to the home compounds) was common. Unemployment was high.

Dominant in this agricultural economy was paddy culture. On 90 per cent of the land under cultivation one autumn rice crop—planted in July and harvested in November—was produced. Two crops were grown on some portions and occasionally three. A few vegetables, fruit and a little jute were also produced. There were many cattle, though most were small and weak from lack of food; goats and poultry were common.

Annually the flat deltaic plain, lying from 15 to 25 feet above sea level, was inundated by floods June through August. Drought followed from December through March. During the five months when crops could be grown and harvested the land was sporadically laid waste by cyclones, tornadoes and hailstorms. Loss of the summer (second) crop was a common occurrence and sometimes the autumn crop also was severely damaged, bringing famine and pestilence.

Dwelling on scattered plots and embankments rising above the plain, villagers were isolated during floods. Often one cluster of houses, usually a kinship group, was separated from another in the same village. Isolation commonly extended into the dry season for lack of roads. The weather, too hot during the rains and too cold in winter, also discouraged outward participation. Moreover, as competition for land grew keener during the last century the people had become increasingly distrustful of their neighbors.

The one alleviating factor was the annual deposit of silt brought by the great Ganges and Jamuna river systems which made the Bengal delta one of the richest soils in the world. In years when nature cooperated the crops, however primitively cultivated and harvested, grew rapidly and abundantly.

Summarizing the situation in Comilla the Academy noted that, economically, the individual peasant, practicing "monsoon agriculture" on his postage stamp holding, could scarcely feed himself, let alone produce a surplus to feed non-cultivators. Politically, the village society was divided into a small educated middle class whose loyalties were directed toward the town, and a mass of unschooled, fearful peasant cultivators who hungered for land, security and leadership. Socially, the villages were at a crossroad, with feudal values slowly disappearing but new values not yet understood or accepted.

Analysis of agricultural and societal problems led the Academy to conclude that cooperative organization would be the most useful and eventually acceptable means of assuring more efficient production. Land would not be pooled as in a collective but other factors of production, such as planning, capital machinery, irrigation and human skill, would be pooled, permitting use of big tools even by small producers. Gradually the subsistence-holdings should assume the shape of commercial farms.

In choosing this model, Director KHAN put his faith in the genius of the Pakistani cultivators and craftsmen, believing that if placed in the right education and decision-making situations they would lead themselves and their groups towards improvement of the general welfare.

In late 1959 the Central Government accepted the recommendation of Director KHAN and established the Basic Democracies Program, later integrating it with the Village-AID program. A second recommendation made by the Director was also followed: tiers of civil administration were established in the Basic Democracies scheme at meaningful socio-economic levels, and a government planning person was assigned to assist in planning functions at each level.

In January 1960 the Academy (by now under provincial authority) sent to the Chief Secretary of East Pakistan a pilot project proposal outlining some basic ideas about rural cooperatives and improved agriculture which included a report on the 25 village groups then being organized. The following month Comilla Kotwali Thana was allocated to the Academy as a laboratory for rural development. With generous help from the Agriculture Department, which gave not only machines but also funds from the Village-AID budget, a broad attack on problems confronting the rural community developed rapidly. From the first pilot project grew a thana-wide five-year plan for development of village cooperatives, introduction of supervised credit, use of machines and joint marketing.

For the preliminary organization and education work in the villages the key person was the Extension Agent or Organizer, who was a leading local farmer, usually suggested by Village-AID workers familiar with the area. Given a brief training in what the Academy hoped to do, he was hired on a monthly basis to go to villages near his home to try to interest farmers in bettering themselves through cooperative action. Neither well-educated nor fully trained, these men responded well to their commission and were able in three months to form 25 pilot groups.

The work of the Academy-employed organizer was completed as soon as the primary groups chose their own organizers. For the society organizers there were weekly classes at the Academy in cooperative principles and practice, improved methods of cultivation, capital formation, credit planning, joint use of agricultural implements, joint storage of water, formation of bullock groups, marketing and the like. As much teaching as possible was done by demonstration and learning-by-doing. The organizers transmitted what they had learned to the villagers at the weekly meetings of the societies; at the same time they developed leadership ability through the exercise of responsibility.

Weekly classes were held for accountants and several booklets were published for them. Special training classes for society members, ranging from beekeeping to poultry raising, were conducted as well as classes in family planning. A biweekly newspaper was distributed by the Academy and illustrated booklets in Bengali were published covering a variety of subjects. Since only one-fourth of the society members were literate, a continuing effort was made by the Academy to insure that these materials were read aloud in village meetings.

The weekly village cooperative meetings were perhaps the most significant development. The overall percentage of member-attendance for the 25 societies in the first year was 69 per cent, marking a radical change for villagers accustomed to meeting only when required by law. The high level of participation promised to eliminate the problem in earlier cooperatives of control being usurped by a management committee.

A regular feature of the meetings was the collection of savings, with savers gaining approval as their names were read aloud while backsliders were frowned upon. At harvest time in-kind savings in larger amounts were made and these grew as societies were able to provide storage for their surplus rice. Some society accounts were well kept from the beginning but most were haphazard until the accountants chosen and paid by the societies learned at the Academy how to keep books.

Loans were a more complicated problem. The condition of the cooperative loan—that it would be made only for productive purposes and based on the ability of that production to pay the loan plus interest—was a new idea, but it was accepted as farmers realized that the annual interest rate was about one-seventh of that paid to moneylenders.

Introduction of the power pump in early 1960 to raise water from rivers onto land during dry months was the first major experiment in cooperative action and the first experience with farm machinery in an East Bengal village. The pumps required a joint effort in constructing irrigation channels across members' lands. The first pumps were assigned by the Agriculture Department with trained operators and rented to village groups on an hourly or seasonal basis. When the operators began to run away or to break pumps so that they could leave, Director KHAN's solution was to give local men three weeks' training at the Academy and send them back to operate the cooperative pumps in their villages. Though the societies under this system had to pay the operators, the hours of operation immediately went up and breakdown time was minimized. All pumps have since been operated by resident "drivers" and have provided a great stimulation to production and income.

The first tractors were introduced in April the same year. Also provided by the Agriculture Department, they were used in a manner similar to the pumps. Economic consideration dictated renting to groups which could provide several days of work in a single village. In practice the fragmentation of holdings did not prove to be the insuperable obstacle previously imagined—the tractors proved workable even on small plots divided by water control ails which also served as owner boundaries. Either the boundary was plowed through between adjoining fields and rebuilt or the tractor was raised and driven over the soil barrier.

In the first year 14 of the 25 societies developed group plans of some sort. Mutual assistance teams of farmers were organized to trade work and weeding; joint purchases of cotton yarn were made at attractive prices by weavers; sugarcane was jointly marketed, and surplus rice was held in cooperative storehouses until the price was high. A collective agricultural venture was initiated by one society which rented and worked three acres with profits deposited to a fund to be used for another joint enterprise. The Rickshaw Pullers' Society saved enough to buy 10 new rickshaws.

To accommodate new groups whose volunteer organizers began to appear unsolicited at weekly organizers' meetings, the pilot project was expanded in March 1961 to 60 societies with a membership of over 2,000.

Realizing that the villages needed help in all their institutions, the Academy's next undertaking was pilot work with local self-government groups and then with schools and women. These programs led later to the organization of a Thana Training Center to provide many kinds of classes tailored especially for members of Union Councils, teachers, midwives, youth clubs, women's thrift groups and civil administrators working at the village and thana levels.

International organizations supported the work of the Academy. Japan cooperated through the Colombo Plan and introduced new methods of rice cultivation. The U.S. Peace Corps assigned eight volunteers to the pilot project. One spent a year on food processing, devising the economical rice boiler that was introduced on a large scale. Two others worked at the cooperative machine shop keeping tractors repaired and training drivers. Another conducted an educational experiment with three primary schools, bringing boys to the Academy for training in poultry raising, gardening and other 4-H type activities. Two girls did similar work with village women and a nurse handled the public health activities. Most importantly the Peace Corps volunteers and their Academy co-workers concentrated on training local staff to take over from them.

The Provincial Government included the Comilla project in its Second Five-Year Plan (July 1960-June 1965.) Total cost of the program was estimated at the rupee equivalent of US$1,000,000. Expenditures for staff salary, organization and training (approximately US$200,000) were provided for by a government grant. The remainder was supplied by a Ford Foundation "loan" with repayments to be deposited in a revolving fund for use in future development.

In late 1961 a Central Cooperative Association was established at the Academy in which all village societies were federated. Without this sustained living center, in Director KHAN’s view, the societies would have fallen back into the old ruts of ignorance and apathy.

The Association was first a training center where the new attitudes and new skills were taught and where members could assemble to share and seek solutions to their problems. The weekly classes for organizers, supervisors, model farmers and bookkeepers were put under its direction, thus institutionalizing village leadership training on a continuing year to year basis. Intensive courses, such as for mechanics, were also taken over by the Association. Banking facilities were provided and a machine station set up to rent and repair equipment and procure parts. As funds permitted the Association began to purchase equipment in order to maintain a pool from which societies could draw.

It was soon realized that banking was the core of the Central Association's existence. A loan provided for in the Plan from the Cooperation Department was not required; liquid funds from savings deposits and earnings proved sufficient to take care of credit requirements of the member cooperatives. At the present rate of income the Association may become self-supporting earlier than expected.

In September 1961 the Planning Commission asked the Director whether a public works program could be organized in the villages to increase employment and income and whether laborers would accept wheat for wages. If so, U.S. Public Law 480 counterpart funds and surplus wheat might be used for rural development. Director KHAN welcomed this proposal. Experience in the previous two years had shown that no substantial improvement in agriculture could be achieved until a proper system of drainage and irrigation was developed throughout the thana. Although major flood control works could only be undertaken by the Provincial Government, clearing choked drainage channels would eliminate the cause of much damage, and this work, KHAN thought, could be administered by the local councils.

Inadequate transportation was the second major factor limiting agricultural development. Many cooperatives could not handle commercial quantities of paddy because they were beyond reach of tractor or boat. Motorable feeder roads were especially scarce. With skillful planning roads could become an integral part of a water control system, since annual inundation required roads to be built as causeways with bridges and culverts to accommodate drainage. Both work programs could be undertaken by the cooperatives.

Agreeing to organize a pilot project, Director KHAN and his staff made assumptions based on two years of experience. By November 1961 a schedule was prepared. The work started in January 1962 when funds were secured and it provided employment for poorer farmers and landless laborers for five months. The results became an incentive for a continuing effort.

The Academy was justified in its belief that the most effective and least expensive organizational and administrative agency would be the Thana Council and its constituent members, the Union Councils. The scheme gave these newly elected Basic Democrats an opportunity to prove and reinforce their function in the society. The Circle Officer, as representative of the civil administration and secretary and of the Thana Council, was made executive chief. The Union Councils prepared the schemes in consultation with villagers, organized and supervised the work and were responsible for ongoing maintenance. Engineering advice and additional supervision, needed particularly on large projects, were provided by a Peace Corps volunteer. He introduced the novelty of surveying the deceptively flat land and was at first chased away by suspicious farmers. Only by patiently demonstrating that his methods would work for irrigation, as well as flood control, was the villagers' cooperation won.

Despite the reluctance of villagers to accept part payment in wheat flour, the conflict of individual versus village interest, disputes between union councils and between thanas, and the stigma attached to manual labor which deterred some farmers—owning as little as one acre—from doing earth-digging, a total of 18 irrigation and drainage and four sand erosion control schemes were carried to completion at a cost less than estimated. The union councils, with assistance from the Academy, mobilized 45,000 man-days of labor from 195 villages. By hoe and head-basket some eight million cubic feet of earth were moved at a unit cost of slightly less than US$3.00 per 1,000 cubic feet. The clearing of about 35 miles of old canals and drainage channels, and construction of 14.5 miles of embankments and roads—with two regulators and 23 culverts—protected fall crops valued at US$750,000.

Beyond the value of the improvements was the help given villagers in wages and food and the encouragement of emerging local leadership. At a time when incomes were thinnest and rice scarcest the payment of cash and wheat wages directly to villagers was non-inflationary. Moreover, only three-fifths of the government appropriation was used, and less wheat was drawn than anticipated. The program also demonstrated that foreign aid could be channeled to the village level in a way whereby the bulk of the population benefited.

Upon inspection of the Comilla public works project the Provincial Government decided to extend and intensify the public works aspect of the Comilla pilot project for the next three years. Comilla would be a model for the 16 other districts in the province. President Ayub Khan agreed and in late September 1962 sanctioned a grant of Rs.10 crores (US$20 million) for the 1963-64 projects in all of the other 413 thanas in East Pakistan. The Secretary of Basic Democracies, in announcing the President's action, specified that work in each thana would be fashioned after the public works program initiated at Comilla and responsible officers from throughout the province would report to the Academy for training and to observe the work done there.

Director KHAN arranged with the government and his own staff members to carry on an intensive evaluation of the 1962-63 public works program. Research was done on planning, execution and finished work to provide dependable data as to the potential meaning of the program, to agricultural production, village roads, and Union Council development.

At the Academy, meanwhile, the next priorities were education for children and adults, economic activities for women, and a program in public health. The Director considered these essential to safeguard the gains made in economic and administrative well-being. He recognized that the capacity to accept innovations depended upon education of all family members. This work has required more evaluation, experimentation and adaptation than the cooperatives or public works programs since education and women's activities must be related directly to traditional values and practices of the people.

Before the education program was launched in January 1963, the goals and methods were set forth in a detailed outline based on a carefully researched pilot project. The aims were to give every child in a cooperative village an opportunity to learn the "three R's" and to give every adult cooperative member enough literacy to be capable of reading, writing and simple accounting. Classes for children would be in arithmetic, reading and games, and for adults in arithmetic, reading, religious instruction and information on topics of their own, local and national interest. Religious instruction was included to make the villagers' life "more disciplined and satisfying."

In Comilla Kotwali Thana there were 59 schools for a rural population of 158,000 living in 400 villages, and facilities were inadequate for sitting, teaching or reading. The solution proposed by the Academy was "feeder schools" in all cooperative villages, which would cater to the needs of children up to Class II in the morning and conduct classes in the evening for adults. Each village cooperative would pay its own teacher and arrange for school space. The Academy staff provides weekly instruction sheets for the teachers which are modified as needs and suggestions dictate.

In 1962 the Provincial Government also proposed a province-wide extension of the cooperative experiment. Director KHAN strongly urged, however, that expansion be phased over several years to avoid the risks of spreading even a proven formula too fast and too thin. Respecting his recommendations, it was decided to begin with three thanas in 1963 and to base future plans on results achieved there. The Director suggested as headquarters for the new projects Village-AID Institutes where the requisite instructors, hostel accommodations, classrooms, demonstrations farms and equipment appeared to be most readily available. Like the Academy, these institutes could undertake both training and experimental work and their association with actual projects would give "life and substance" to their regular classes. The Academy has undertaken training of the personnel who will work at all levels in the three thanas.

The Academy not only has demonstrated everything it teaches but also has assessed and documented each project undertaken. Both the Academy and Thana Training Center have sent out annual reports. Together they have published a monthly report covering training, research, progress and evaluation of all extension work. The Academy has produced a quarterly Journal. Monographs have multiplied, technical and non-technical manuals and pamphlets now number more than 50, and a larger number of leaflets have been prepared for use in the various programs. Comilla could provide such training opportunities and documentation because it was adequately financed by the Pakistan Government and the Ford Foundation.

In April 1963 the Academy moved into ample new quarters constructed some flve miles northwest of the Old Abhoy Ashram, its original site. Next to the Academy at the new Kotbari campus, and likewise in new quarters, is the East Pakistan Cooperative College. Adjacent are the nearly completed Teachers' Training College and Technical School. The Provincial Chief Secretary recently suggested that the unit of the Gazetted Officers College in Dacca should also be moved to Kotbari. This concentration affords the larger and more varied teaching talent required to service the training needs of the expanding programs.

With many of its earlier functions in village training and demonstration now being carried on by the Central Cooperative Association and the Thana Training Center, which occupy the Old Abhoy Ashram site, the Academy is shaping up as a university and research center.

Unlike so many other community development efforts, the villagers in Comilla have not been reached last and with least; attention has been centered upon them. Intimations of the new dimensions are already appearing in increased agricultural production and in savings accumulated by the societies. More important than these physical improvements, in AKHTER HAMEED KHAN’s view, are the means by which they were achieved. Village leadership and group involvement will determine whether the gains are cumulative and can be maintained and whether the methods are applicable to other areas. It has been a slow process, but there is evidence that Academy-initiated activities in Comilla are providing the framework for the most forward looking members of the rural society—the most aggressive in their desires for change—to assume leadership. The modernization of the Bengali village, in Director KHAN’s opinion, can be achieved peacefully only if these "revolutionary" elements of the village are actively involved in developmental processes and if leadership is transferred promptly to the villagers as soon as they become articulate and self-directed.

Characteristically, AKHTER HAMEED KHAN has concentrated his energies on this peaceful revolution. His outside activities currently are limited to membership in the Dacca University Syndicate and the Mymensingh Agricultural University Syndicate, both policy-making bodies. Though he avoids most social affairs and is in daily conversation a man of few words, he derives great pleasure from occasional lighthearted repartee. He is the author of numerous poems in Urdu, judged by qualified readers as "possessing exceptional merit." The poems reflect his sense of humor, sometimes sharply satirical and mostly at his own expense.

He has also written a number of articles and speeches on rural reconstruction and the Comilla experiment. Equally at home in Urdu and English, he commonly draws word pictures, choosing from a vast vocabulary only words that will be readily understood by his audience. His knowledge of the Koran and his ability to argue its interpretation with Muslim religious leaders has been important in the Academy's community efforts because of the influence of these leaders in the lives of the villagers.

Tall, lean, with bright grey eyes, prominent yet compressed lips, a firm chin and thin, close-cropped hair, he has the air of a man at peace with himself. The simplicity of manner that set him apart in his earlier official career is still maintained. In classes, public meetings and high offices his most natural dress is khaki khaddar kurta and ordinary pyjama (long-sleeved loose shirt worn outside comfortable trousers); during the rainy season an umbrella may be added. Expensive clothes he regards as encumbrances and a waste; "a man should have very few material needs" is his personal rule.

His wife shares his concern for villagers. Aside from raising their three daughters, aged 20, 16 and 10, and one son, now six years old, she owns and manages a small weaving, dyeing and cloth printing establishment which provides remunerative employment and vocational training to needy people.

Since July 1962 Pakistan President Ayub Khan has held open an offer to AKHTER HAMEED KHAN to become his Special Advisor on Rural Development, which the Director has declined in order to maintain continuity in the Comilla effort. He has also been offered the Vice-Chancellorship of Dacca University.

In appreciation of AKHTER HAMEED KHAN’s work, President Ayub Khan wrote after a visit to Comilla in March 1963:

"It was a great delight and pleasure for me to visit your Academy, see the excellence of the work you are doing and its effect in the form of revival of hope, self-confidence and cooperative spirit amongst the people that you have been serving. It is the first time that I found the ideas that were only vaguely present in my mind put into practical shape in a realistic and pragmatic manner to help people stand on their own feet and better their lot. I was deeply moved by all that and congratulate you on your magnificent effort.

"I hope your experiences are put into practice through the country; in that lies our real salvation, and you can rest assured that I, on my part, will do all that is possible to support this noble cause. "

August 1963
Manila

REFERENCES:

Books, Journals, Monographs

Dawn of a New Era-Basic Democracies in Pakistan. Pakistan: Bureau of National Reconstruction. Undated.

Dupree, Louis. "The Basic Democracies Programme," American Universities Field Staff, Reports Service. New York. South Asia Series. Vol. 4, no. 1, January 18, 1960.

______. "The West Pakistan Academy for Village Development: Peshawar," Ibid. Vol. 4, no. 2, January 18, 1960.

Fairchild, Henry W. and Shamsul Hoq. "Cooperative Versus Commune—Pakistan's Comilla Thana Villages Start a Momentous Experiment," International Development Review. Washington, D.C.: Society for International Development. Vol. 4, no. 1, March 1962.

______. "A New Cooperative System for Comilla Thana," Rural Cooperative Pilot Project, First Annual Report 1961. Comilla, East Pakistan: Pakistan Academy for Village Development.

Fairchild, Henry W. and M. Z. Hussain. "A New Cooperative System for Comilla Thana," Rural Cooperative Pilot Project, Second Annual Report 1962. Ibid.

Journal of the East Pakistan Academy for Village Development. Comilla, East Pakistan. Vol. 1, 1960; Vol. 2, no. 2, July 1961; Vol. 2, no. 3, October 1961.

Khan, Akhter Hameed. Comilla Kotwali Thana Council Pilot Irrigation and Flood Control Scheme, 1961-1962. Comilla, East Pakistan: Pakistan Academy for Village Development.

______. How the Villagers Are Creating Capital. Ibid. Mimeographed. Undated.

______. "Problems of Non-Government Colleges," College Teacher's Association Bulletin No. 2. Comilla, East Pakistan: Sinha Press. Undated.

______. Progress Report on the Comilla Cooperative Project June 1962. Comilla, East Pakistan: Pakistan Academy for Village Development. Mimeographed.

______. "Villagers' problems of famine and Hood near Comilla," in diary form beginning from May 16, 1956, published serially in The Pakistan Observer. Dacca, 1961.

Khan, Akhter Hameed and A. K. M. Mohsen. "Mobilizing Village Leadership—The Kotwali Public Works Project Taps a Reservoir of Latent Ability," International Development Review. Washington, D.C.: Society for International Development. Vol. 4, no. 3, September 1962.

Khan, Akhter Hamid. "My Brother Akhter Hameed Khan," The Pakistan Observer. July 20 and 27, 1958.

Mohsen, A. K. M. The Education Projects. Comilla, East Pakistan: Pakistan Academy for Village Development. Undated.

______. Report on a Rural Public Works Programme in Comilla Kotwali Thana, June 1962. First chapter and some other portions by Akhter Hameed. Khan. Mimeographed.

Peace Corps Volunteer. Washington, D.C.: Peace Corps. Vol. 1, no. 3, January 1963.

Project to Demonstrate the Modernization of the Rural Community Along the Lines of the Comilla Experiment. (Anonymous). Comilla, East Pakistan: Pakistan Academy for Village Development. Undated.

Project for Modernization and Development of the Rural Community in East Pakistan. Compiled under guidance of Akhter Hameed Khan by Oboidullah Khan, David Gordon, H. W. Fairchild, and members of Academy staff. Ibid. Mimeographed. December 25, 1962.

Raper, Arthur F. Some Reflections on the Comilla Experiment in Village Improvement. Typewritten. January 23, 1963.

Schuler, Edgar A. and S. M. H. Zaida. Response to Village Disaster: Tornado and Hailstorm at South Rampur, Comilla. Mimeographed. Undated.

Schuler, Edgar A. et al. The Famine Relief Food Grain Stock: Note on a Case of Creative Development Administration. Mimeographed. Undated.

Talbot, Phillips. "A Glimpse of Pakistan—First Impressions of a Returning Visitor," American Universities Field Staff, Reports Service. New York. October 31, 1956.

Three Days Orientation Programme for Circle Officers (Dev.) on Rural Public Works. Comilla, East Pakistan: Pakistan Academy for Village Development. Mimeographed outline. Undated.

Two Weeks Seminar Programme for Senior Officers of the Agricultural Department (7.1.6322.1.63). Ibid.

Zaida, S. M. Hafeez et al. Annual Evaluation Report 1960—An Evaluation Survey, of the Academy's Extension Projects. Ibid.

______. Pakistan Academy for Village Development, Third Annual Report, June 1961-May 1962 (Preliminary).Ibid.

Letters to Akhter Hameed Khan:

from President Ayub Khan, March 22, 1963

from Governor Abdul Monem Khan, March 25, 1963

from David Gordon, Resident Representative, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, June 12, 1962 (with copy attached of Gordon's letter to Raymond Goodman, International Bank in Wash., D.C. of the same date).

Speeches of Akhter Hameed Khan:

Noakhali District Secondary School Teachers Conference, Choumohani, September 20, 1950.

Presidential Address, Tippera District M.E. School Teachers' Conference, Chandpur, October 15, 1950.

Presidential Address, East Bengal Teachers' Conference, Third Session and East Pakistan Secondary Teachers' Conference, Comilla, November 20, 1952.

Presidential Address, Secondary Teachers' Conference, Narayanganj, March 20, 1953.

Presidential Address, District Teachers' Conference, Narayanganj, March 20, 1953.

Presidential Address, District Teachers' Conference, Bakerganj, April 24, 1953.

Presidential Address, Annual General Conference East Pakistan Teachers' Association, Dacca, February 14, 1958.

Cooperative rally, Comilla Academy, September 1962 (member attendance, over 3,000)

Assembly of some 8,000 Union Council members called by Secretary of Basic Democracies, Dacca, December 19, 1962 (a discussion of Public Works Programme in Comilla Thana encouraging Union Councils in other areas to carry on similar programs).

Assembly of a second group of 8,000 Union Council members called as above, Rajshahi, December 1962.

Annual Provincial Cooperative Meeting attended by some 1,000 farmer delegates, Dacca, January 19, 1963 (a discussion of cooperatives in Comilla area and benefits accruing to members of village societies),

Assembly of school youths and teachers, Comilla Academy, January 23, 1963 (encouraging students and teachers to take active part in local efforts to develop more effective rural institutions).