Evaluation of RD policies and Programmes

This ppt covers the history of rural development programmes and problems in implementing rural development policies and programmes in India. This will be helpful for PG students of State Agril. Universities under their Compulsory Courses

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

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Definition of Rural Development According to World Bank R ural 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.

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

6. 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.

7. 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

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

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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 

13. 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.

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

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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

18. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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

19. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

20. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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 .

21. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

22. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

23. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

24. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

25. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

26. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

27. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

28. Rural Development Policies: A Brief History On the administrative front , the failure could be explained in terms of excessive centralized bureaucratic control as also the power-cum-development politics.

29. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

30. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

31. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

32. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

33. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

34. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

35. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

36. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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

37. Rural Development Policies: A Brief History 4. Anti-Poverty Programmes The 5 th 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

38. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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.

39. Rural Development Policies: A Brief 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).

40. Rural Development Policies: A Brief History Many of these such rural development policies and programmes have been repackaged in subsequent five year plans till now.

41. 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 .

42. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

43. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

44. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

45. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

46. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

47. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

48. Rural Development Policies and Programmes : A Critique 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.

49. PROBLEMS IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

50. 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

51. 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

52. 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

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

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

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

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

57. 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.

58. BIGGEST PROBLEMS FACED BY FARMERS IN INDIA?

59. 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.

60. 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. 

61. 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.

62. 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.

63. 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.

64. 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.

65. 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.

66. 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.

67. 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

68. 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.

69. 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.

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

71. 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.

72. 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.

73. 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 .

74. 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.

75. 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.

76. Problems / Constraints in Implementation of RD Programmes

77. 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.

78. 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.

79. 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.

80. 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 .

81. 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.

82. 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.

83. 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.

84. 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 

85. 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.

86. 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.

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