India - Third National Agricultural Extension Project

 Third national agricultural extension project Report No: ; Type: Report/Evaluation Memorandum ; Country: India; Region: South Asia; Sector: Research; Major Sector: Agriculture; ProjectID: P009863 The India Third National Agricultural Extension project (NAEP III), supported by Credit 1754-IN for US$85.0 million equivalent, was approved in FY87 and closed on March 31, 1995, after a one-year extension. A total of US$18.4 million equivalent was canceled. The Implementation Completion Report (ICR) was prepared by the FAO/World Bank Cooperative Programme and finalized by the South Asia Regional Office. It includes borrower comments, which parallel those in the ICR. The overall objective of the project was to increase agricultural production in India through the development of a better organized, better integrated, and better trained, professional extension service. The explicit project objectives were to: introduce the Training and Visit (T&V) system of agricultural extension in the State of Himachal Pradesh and into eastern Uttar Pradesh; further strengthen the reorganized agricultural extension system and the linkages between extension and research introduced in the State of Assam under the Assam Agricultural Development Project (Credit 728-IN); and, assist in the implementation of special subprojects on extension related activities. This latter component was supported at the central and state levels through replenishment of the Special Subproject Fund established in the Ministry of Agriculture under the first National Agricultural Extension Project (Credit 1523-IN). The input-orientation of the specific objectives of NAEP III focuses evaluation on these achievements, rather than the wider objectives that might more usefully be considered. The project built on the long country experience of agricultural extension development and three prior Bank-financed extension projects. It met most of its physical objectives by providing infrastructure (offices, residences, and training facilities) and vehicles in all three states, and met its training objectives by providing large numbers of training courses, workshops, and study tours to improve management and technical competence of staff. However, the project applied the T&V blueprint slavishly, when the weaknesses and problems of the model were already well appreciated. These weaknesses included a relatively inflexible and expensive, top-down approach to information dissemination in the rural sector. Studies required under the project to document rigorously the efficacy of extension planning and implementation through T&V in India were not undertaken, or were inadequately executed. Monitoring and evaluation was deficient, and learning opportunities provided by the project were wasted. The ICR provides no explanation for these deficiencies. The ICR rates project outcome as satisfactory, institutional development as substantial, and sustainability as uncertain. The Operations Evaluation Department (OED) rates outcome as only marginally satisfactory because, although the project put the T&V system in place as planned, it did not complete the planned studies that could have been so useful in future extension planning. OED rates sustainability as unlikely, because the capacity of the states to sustain such large and costly systems is considered to be low. OED disagrees with the rating of institutional development as substantial, and rates it as modest because of the missed opportunities for more wide-ranging reforms and for greater enhancement of cost efficiency. OED agrees with the rating of Bank performance as satisfactory. In finding the T&V system as promulgated in India to be seriously flawed, insufficient in coverage of farming communities, excessively top-down, and financially unsustainable, the ICR itself offered important lessons. These include: a need for managerial de-layering, for greater mobility of field staff, for greater use of more cost-effective media materials, and for reducing staff numbers in extension services to levels that governments can afford sustainably; the already noted necessity to improve monitoring and evaluation; and the virtue of fresh thinking to encourage more pluralistic approaches to the provision of extension services. The latter lesson relates strongly to contemporary perceptions of effective public extension systems, which, if used as the frame of reference for assessing the relevance of this operation and for rating its outcome, would have seen it as a less than satisfactory project. The quality of the ICR is satisfactory, apart from the lack of a plan for future operation, which is dependent on the development of concrete proposals by the individual states that have not yet been made. No audit is planned.