Ideas of rural reconstruction or cooperation did not pass away with colonial rule but endured in South Asia under new nomenclature and frameworks. This postscript discusses the legacy of British policies of development in the Punjab, even though the lineage is marked by a discontinuity: while programmes of community developed and funded by the Americans took root in both India and Pakistan from the 1950s onwards, there was little recognition of the earlier colonial flirtation with similar ideas. Instead, community development was presented as a novel way of eradicating ‘third world poverty’ and continues to be recast in various deifications of the local as an ‘innovative’ cure for underdevelopment. This ahistorical persistence of ideas of community is neither accidental nor benign: at the heart of all valorization of ‘grassroots’ development is an abdication of responsibility at the structural level and a transfer of blame to the poor. Much like the colonial schemes of rural uplift, the community development programmes are also premised on self-help and a fundamental criticism of the outlook and habits of the peasant or citizen as the root cause of indebtedness or poverty.

Both India and Pakistan embarked on large-scale community development programmes in the 1950s and 1960s, with the financial support of the United States.