The Planning And Implementation Of Rural Development Projects

This Book Not Only Discusses The Problems Of Communication And Coordination Of The Gram Panchayat Organisation But Also Investigates Management Problems As Perceived By The Elected Functionaries In Planning, Financing, Organising, Directing And Controlling The Work Of Rural Development.

This book meets the needs of teachers and students of agriculture and rural development project and programme planning, planners employed by governments in developing countries and by external financing agencies. Project planners must understand the aspirations of rural families and their local leaders, the national development and sector planning goals and policies of their governments and the development goals and policy priorities perceived by external financing agencies in relation to their countries. These areas are not always consistent and trade-offs may be required. However it is recognised that poor project planning is a major constraint to the sustainable realization of project and programme objectives and sector goals. Illustrated with case studies and logical framework matrices, this book presents well-established and relatively new practices followed in the context of agriculture and rural development project and programme planning. Although based on experiences gained in Africa, the issues described are relevant to planning problems encountered in other developing regions of the world. It addresses the main factors which affect the success of planning such as a government's ability to guarantee macro-economic stability and sound sector development policies; the shift from 'top-down', bureaucratic to 'bottom-up', participatory planning approaches and the roles played by external financing agencies. It explains key technical, financial, economic, environmental, socio-cultural, equity, gender and institutional-strengthening issues concerning planning in rural areas and reviews the planning tools and approaches available. The procurement of goods and services, the disbursement of funds and monitoring and evaluation requirements are examined in detail.

This book deals with problems frequently encoun-tered by agencies, managers, and technicians who try to implement large-scale development projects. Specifically, it focuses on the implementation problems associated with projects sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) and the World Bank in developing countries. Some historical background on how implementation problems became a focus of concern is presented below. Development assistance on a significant scale started with Marshall Plan aid to reconstruct Western Europe following World War II. [1] In that case, the donor (the United States) asked not to be part of the process that determined how the money was to be spent. Instead, the United States asked the West European countries to establish their own priorities for assistance (which they did after a considerable amount of inter-country negotiation).