Monitoring and Evaluation Experience of Agricultural Projects in India

Introduction This paper briefly describes, compares, analyzes the methodologies and tools being used for monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and finally M&E experience of two major agricultural development projects in India namely Diversified Agricultural Support Project (DASP) being carried out in 32 districts of Uttar Pradesh and 5 districts of Uttranchal and National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP) being carried out in seven states of India (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Punjab). Innovations in Technology Dissemination component of NATP is being implemented in four districts in each state as a pilot project in phased manner. Both the projects are for a period of five years and started almost at the same time. Besides monitoring and evaluation of a few other projects in India, Agriculture Management Center (AMC) at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML) is actively involved in Monitoring and evaluation of these two projects. These two projects, despite having different objectives, have many things in common as the ultimate aim of both the projects is to improve the quality of life of rural people through various interventions focusing on improving the agricultural productivity, diversifying farming system for value addition, providing infrastructure support, promoting grass root level institutions like Farmers Interest Groups and Self Help Groups, and improving research-extension-farmer linkage, focusing on demand-driven location-specific technology development and dissemination system, reorganizing agricultural administration for decentralized governance for effective convergence of services and manpower as an integrated and holistic approach of development. However, both the projects are being implemented in active collaboration with line departments and greater involvement of farming community. A brief description of these two projects is given in following paragraphs.