Evaluation of RD policies and Programmes

Evaluation of Rural Development
Policies and Programmes
Prepared by Jayanta Kr. Dutta.
Asst. Prof.
Department of Extn. Edn. College of
Agriculture, AAU, Jorhat.

Concept of Rural Development:
Rural development in general is
used to denote the actions and
initiatives taken to improve the
standard of living in non-urban areas
and villages.

Rural Development
• Rural development actions mostly aim at
the social and economic development of the
areas.
• These programs are usually top-down from
the local or regional authorities, regional
development agencies, NGOs, national
governments or international development
organizations.

Definition of Rural Development
• According to World Bank
Rural development is a strategy designed to
improve the economic and social life of a
specific group of people by extending the
benefits of development to the poorest
among those who seek livelihood in the rural
areas.

Rural Development Strategies
1. Growth Oriented Strategy:
2. Welfare Oriented Strategy:
3. Responsive Strategy:
4. Integrated or Holistic Strategy:

Monitoring:
• Monitoring is continuous or periodic review and
surveillance by management at every levels of
hierarchy, of the implementation of an activity to
ensure input deliveries, work schedules,
targeted outputs and other required actions are
proceeding as per plan.

• Monitoring is a surveillance system, used by
those responsible for a programme / project to
see that everything goes as nearly as possible
according to the plan, so that resources are not
wasted and objectives are fulfilled.
• It may require
- Indicators
- Data collecting tools
- Tabulation & analysis of data
- Reporting

Evaluation
• Evaluate= Judging the value of something or
assessing to what extent objectives are
attained

• The Ministry of RD lays great emphasis on
monitoring and evaluation of all rural
development programmes being implemented
in various States/UTs.
• The Monitoring mechanism includes, the
Performance Review Committee, Review
meetings by the Minister of RD and the Chief
Ministers of the States, periodic progress
reports, audit and utilization certificates, video
conferencing and field visits.

• The Ministry conducts evaluation of all major
programmes.
• Impact assessment studies to assess the overall
impact of programmes of village-level is also
conducted in selected district.
• The Vigilance and Monitoring Committees at State
and District Levels in all States/UTs monitor the
implementation of Programmes and introduce
greater transparency in the process.

• But it is observed that, the rural communities
have benefitted very little from the growth
and development occurring in India.
• After 07 decades of Independence, the rural
communities lack basic facilities like schools
and health centers.

• However, more resources and higher priorities
for agriculture and rural development can
become effective only if the current
weaknesses in policymaking are identified
and corrected

• After independence, the task for the national
government was two-fold:
dismantling the traditional and colonial
economy and
erecting in its place the base for modern,
independent and self-reliant economic and
social order.

• To achieve this goal, many schemes and
programmes were launched by different
governments at the central and state levels
from time to time.

• At many times it was seen that only the names
of the programmes were modified with just
some minor changes in the actual contents of
the programme.
• The core objective of almost all programmes
was to bring change in the quality of human
life and remove poverty.

• Till now several schemes of rural development
have been implemented and crores of rupees
have been spent, but the progress made by the
people is no way much demonstrable.

Rural Development Policies: A Brief
History
1. Community Development Programmes
• Pilot projects of Community Development at
Etawah (U. P.) and Nilokheri and Faridabad
(Haryana) provided valuable lessons in
designing the CDPs.
• So did the recommendations of the Grow
More Food Enquiry Committee

History
• The (CDP) commenced in 1952 was an integral
part of the First five-year plan.
• It was a multipurpose and comprehensive
programme which symbolized an integrated
approach to rural development

History
• At the central level, the CDP was entrusted to the
Community Projects Administration set up within
the Planning commission and headed by an
administrator.
• Though the CDP was shaped and funded by the
Central Government, implementation was
through the state government's Developmental
Commissioner who functioned as a coordinator.

History
• By late fifties, it was realized that something
was seriously wrong with CDP.
• Instead of promoting self-motivated, 'self-
help' it continued to be not just officially
motivated self-help but a government's
programme run by bureaucrats.

History
• With overriding concern for economic growth,
people were side tracked and specialists came
to hold the center stage.
• It was no more a people's programme but
bureaucratic mobilization to fulfill targets set
by the centralized planning.

History
• Periodical evaluation of progress of rural
development on the basis of the CDP led to
changes in two directions.
• Firstly, there was the shift in emphasis to
economic development, especially agricultural
production.
• 2ndly, there was the broadening of popular
participation for democratic decentralization.

History
2. Panchayati Raj Institutions(PRI):-
• (PRI) were devised as a three tiered system of
democratic institutions consisting of elected
representatives at the village, block and
district levels.

History
• Though it was viewed as political revolution that
brought democracy to the door steps of the
people and ensured their participation in
developmental activity, yet there is no clarity
regarding the concept itself.
• Apart from this, these institutions are bound to
be judged by the operational efficiency of their
administrative machinery.

History
• Within five years, PRIs began to stagnate and
soon to decline.
• The trend continued in the eighties and
attempts were made to restructure them into
purposive action.

History
• As with the CDPs here too, bureaucracy is
dominant and powerful while the people's
voice is weak.
• Panchayati Raj is an institutionalized
mechanism for rural development. Its twin
objectives are therefore, development and
democracy.

History
• Often, the state government, being
constitutionally responsible for rural
development, is not willing to decentralize but
only to delegate.
• It therefore views Panchayati Raj largely as its
agency, operating in its shadow and under its
control.

History
• On the administrative front, the failure could
be explained in terms of excessive centralized
bureaucratic control as also the power-cum-
development politics.

History
3. Agriculture and Allied Activities
• It may be recalled that in 1959, the first team of
American experts, through the Ford Foundation,
submitted its report entitled 'India's Food Crisis and
Steps to Meet it’ .
• It expressed that efforts should be concentrated
where results will be the greatest. Thus a new
agricultural strategy was envisaged to step up food
production.

History
• Through its report of 1963, the second team
assisted in planning the Intensive Agricultural
District Programme (IADP).
• In 1964, the IADP concept was extended to
other districts as the Intensive Agricultural
Areas Programme (IAAP).
• The IADP in its extended and diluted form as
IAAP failed like the CDP.

History
• The food problem assumed a new urgency in
view of drought conditions. From 1964-67 G.
Subramaniam, the Union Food and
Agricultural Minister evolved a New
Agricultural Strategy which harnessed science
and technology to raise farm productivity.
Agricultural universities and research centres
were set up and agricultural scientists were
involved in the IAAP.

History
• These programmes as it was claimed, caused the
Green Revolution. Nevertheless, there were
administrative weaknesses.
• The BDO hardly had the requisite qualifications
or experience, while the VLWs had neither the
time nor inclination for such work.

History
• Delays in execution, disappointment of
beneficiaries and demoralization of
functionaries are bound to flow from lack of
delegation of adequate financial and
administrative powers to lower level officials.

History
• The agricultural strategy of concentration of
inputs in selected regions led to regional and
class imbalances.
• Benefits did not percolate to the real poor
and led to tensions and conflicts in the
countryside. Naxalism continues to be an
extreme manifestation of agrarian unrest.

History
• Based on this experience, the fourth Plan
admitted to seek growth with social justice.
• Hence two schemes, SFDA and MFAL were
formulated by the Union Government to raise
the earning capacity of the target groups by
identifying their problems.

History
• Like SFDA which was one of the programmes,
to rectify class imbalances, the Drought Prone
Areas Programme (DPAP) of the seventies was
to take care of regional balances

History
4. Anti-Poverty Programmes
• The 5th Plan (1974-79) recognized that rural
development should include agricultural
development in its widest sense, so as to
embrace, apart from crop production, all
allied activities

History
• Alleviation of rural poverty was the prime
objective of the sixth Plan (1980- 85).
• The (IRDP) was started in October 1980. It
brought together earlier rural development
programmes
• Also schemes like (NREP) and (RLEGP) were
introduced.

History
• The anti-poverty programmes of the eighties
fall in two categories. - These are the self-
employment generating schemes like the IRDP
and wage-generating schemes like the
NREP(1980) and the RLEGP(1983).
• NREP and RLEGP were brought together in
1989-90 under Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY).

History
• Many of these such rural development
policies and programmes have been
repackaged in subsequent five year plans till
now.

Rural Development Policies and
Programmes: A Critique
• Over the years the functioning of rural
development policies and programmes and their
impact on the poor has attracted a great deal of
attention.
• Numerous studies (government, and many
independent surveys), have highlighted their
achievements as well as weaknesses.

• Official claims of the number of beneficiaries,
works carried out, additions to productive
assets and employment generated are
unreliable and exaggerated.
• There are non-eligible persons among the
beneficiaries.

• Assets and schemes are frequently not
appropriate to the needs and potentials of
particular regions or groups.
• There is little consultation with local
communities generally and target groups in
particular, in deciding and implementing
schemes.

• Lack of accountability remains a major problem.
The structure, content, and funding of these
programmes remain mostly in the hands of the
central government.
• There is considerable overlap among these
schemes and development schemes included
under the normal state plans.

• Typically each programme is administered by a
separate agency each with its own line hierarchy
and operating independently.
• Coordination is difficult; so is monitoring of
accomplishments in terms of quality of works
actually completed and impact on the
beneficiaries.

• The programmes tend to emphasize loans and
subsidies and provision of current wage
employment rather than ensuring that they
are used to augment productive capacity for
achieving a higher level of employment and
income on a sustained basis.

• The selection of beneficiaries, the distribution
of loans and subsidies, and the recovery of
loans offer much scope for patronage and
corruption at the political and bureaucratic
levels.

• These widely known and documented
deficiencies have given rural poverty alleviation
policies and programmes, a bad name.
• Critics argue that the effective contribution of
these schemes to sustained poverty reduction is
not commensurate with the resources spent on
them.

PROBLEMS IN RURAL
DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

• The Rural Society of India is very much
backward.
• India lives in its villages, and while the cities
have grown immensely over the last 20 years,
rural areas have not seen that kind of
development. For India’s economy to be strong,
the rural economy needs to grow

MAIN PROBLEMS IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT :-
1. People related
2. Agricultural related problems
3. Infrastructure related problems
4. Economic problems
5. Leadership related problems
6. Administrative problems

PEOPLE RELATED PROBLEMS
● Traditional way of thinking.
● Poor understanding.
● Low level of education to understand
developmental efforts and new technology.
● Deprived psychology and scientific
orientation.
● Lack of confidence.
● Poor awareness about RD programmes

AGRICULTURE RELATED PROBLEM
● Unavailability of inputs.
● Poor marketing facility.
● Insufficient extension staff and services.
● Multidimensional tasks to extension personnel.
● Small size of landholding.

INFRASTRUCTURAL RELATED PROBLEM
Poor infrastructure facilities like-:
● Electricity
● Transport
● Educational institutions
● Communication
● Health
● Storage facility etc

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
● Unfavorable economic condition to adopt high
cost technology.
● High cost of inputs.
● Under-privileged rural industries

LEADERSHIP RELATED PROBLEM
● Leadership in the hands of inactive and
incompetent people.
● Self interest of leaders.

ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS
● Political interference.
● Lack of motivation and interest.
● Unwillingness to work in villages.
● Improper utilization of budget.
● No proper monitoring of programs and lack in
their implementation.

BIGGEST PROBLEMS FACED BY
FARMERS IN INDIA?

1. Small and fragmented land-holdings:
The average size of holdings was 2.28 hectares in
1970-71 which was reduced to 1.82 hectares in
1980-81 and 1.50 hectares in 1995-96.
• The size of the holdings will further decrease with
the infinite Sub-division of the land holdings.

2. Seeds:
Seed is a critical and basic input for attaining
higher crop yields and sustained growth in
agricultural production.
• Distribution of assured quality seed is as
critical as the production of such seeds.

• Unfortunately, good quality seeds are out of
reach of the majority of farmers, especially
small and marginal farmers mainly because of
very high prices of better seeds.

3. Manures, Fertilizers and Biocides
The average yields of almost all the crops are
among the lowest in the world.
• This is a serious problem which can be solved
by judicious application of manures and
fertilizers.

4. Irrigation:
Although India is the second largest irrigated
country of the world after China, only one-
third of the cropped area is under irrigation.
• India cannot achieve sustained progress in
agriculture unless and until more than half of
the cropped area is brought under assured
irrigation.

5. Lack of mechanisation:
In spite of the large scale mechanisation of
agriculture in some parts of the country, most
of the agricultural operations in larger parts
are carried on manually using simple and
conventional tools and implements like
wooden plough, sickle, etc.

6. Soil erosion:
Large tracts of fertile land suffer from soil
erosion by wind and water. This area must be
properly treated and restored to its original
fertility.

7. Agricultural Marketing:
Agricultural marketing still continues to be in a
bad shape in rural India.
• In the absence of sound marketing facilities,
the farmers have to depend upon local traders
and middlemen for the disposal of their farm
produce which is sold at throw-away price.

8. Scarcity of capital:
• Since the agriculturists’ capital is locked up in
his lands and stocks, he is obliged to borrow
money for stimulating the tempo of
agricultural production

Now, the use of technology can be effectively
done in various manners in order to help out
farmers, such as:
1. Direct transfer of capital by the government
to the farmers which has already got initiated
by our PM NaMo under the Jan Dhan Yojna.
2. Agricultural Marketing through modern
technology like mobile apps will be another
step forward.

3. Educating farmers about techniques to avoid
soil erosion and increasing harvests by
reaching out to them through advanced
technology will also be a big step forward.

• According to Puja Mondal
(https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/essay/de
velopment-programmes-in-india-an-
evaluation/31324), Analysis of various
developmental programmes can be
summarized as 

1. Village development or rather all types of
development has been politicized.
• Generally, every programme is launched with an
eye to the next election.
• The programme is carried out in a half-hearted
manner. Thus, many programmes either wither
away after sometime or merged with some other
schemes.

2. Most of the programmes were made at the
interest of the politicians and bureaucrats rather
than requirements of the rural people.
• These programmes were framed by such persons
who have either never visited villages or were not
very well conversant to the reality of social and
economic day-to-day life of the rural people.

3. Coordination between the different welfare
schemes and their implementing agencies was
lacking.
• Officials attached to these programmes did not
have faith in the objectives of these programmes
at the core of their heart. They lacked
commitment to the roles assigned to them.

4. The obj. of almost all development programmes
were the 
• removal of poverty,
• enhancing the quality of life and
• reduction in income inequalities,
but after the implementation of many schemes
the gap between the rich and the poor has
widened. The backward have become more
backward.

5. Religion and caste both have acted as important
barriers to all schemes of development. India is a
caste-ridden society and caste-based prejudices,
and stereotypes are well known.
• Moreover, there were various customs of
different communities, and groups resulting in
putting hurdles in various schemes of
development.

Problems / Constraints in
Implementation of RD Programmes

• RD programmes are implemented in
consultation with several departments and
financial institution, agencies of peoples
representatives etc.
• It is often observed that these agencies,
organization fail to maintain proper
coordination among each other.

1. Inadequate funds:
• In our country, a fixed amount of funds are
allocated for a particular rural development
programme.
• These are distributed among States/Districts
as per the importance. The share of the Fund
to cope with the local problems seems to be
inadequate.

2. Leakage of benefits:
• It is observed that, there is considerable leakage
of benefits to non-target sectors and groups like
small, marginal farmers, agricultural and non
agricultural labourers, rural artisans, SC, ST, and
deprived women etc.
• It is observed that benefits are not properly
reaching to these classes.

3. Low Sustaining Impact
• It is observed that a considerable number of rural
developments programmes/schemes having no or
little sustaining impact for changing the socio-
economic status of the beneficiaries.
• This is perhaps due to the existence of low or no
development approach / thoughts. This factor again
dominated by the lack of awareness about the
programmes.

4. Dominance of welfare over productivity
• In India, most of the rural development
programmes are backed by both credit and
subsidy components.
• It is observed that the subsidy component is
often extending up to 100 percent in some
selected schemes and class of beneficiaries.
This reduces the productivity motive and
attitude of the beneficiaries.

5. More Generalized Programme
• The rural development Programmes are
launched in the context of general problems of
the rural areas.
• It fails to give importance to some particular
and area issues. The rural development
programmers should be micro in nature and
growth oriented based on real values.

Summary
• Over the years, in the subsequent five-year
plans, introduction of many new programmes
and revision of existing programmes took
place as part of rural development policy.

Summary
• However, many of these programmes have
received strong criticisms for ineffective
implementation due to a variety of reasons.
• There is no marked improvement in the living
conditions of the landless farmers, small land
owners and the common masses

Summary
• It is said that much of the money spent on
(village) development programmes and
various schemes went in the pockets of village
officials, development personnel, technical
hands (engineers), political leaders, etc.

Summary
• This bare fact was even acknowledged by Rajiv
Gandhi, when he became the Prime Minister
of India.
• The larger beneficiaries of these programmes
were big farmers and village moneylenders
who lent money to the small farmers or
landless labourers on high rates of interest.

CONCLUSION
Proper implementation of all developmental
schemes requires three main things:
(i) Correct and clear visualization of the goals and
methods of achievement of the programme.
(ii) Transparency in implementation.
(iii) Accountability at every level.

Evaluation of RD policies and Programmes

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