Concurrent evaluation of poverty alleviation programmes (sep-dec-1995) v.2; c.2

The Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment has entrusted the Village Study Unit, a training-cum-research Unit at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, to undertake the study on poverty alleviation and to provide concurrent feedback based on socio-economic studies conducted by the IAS officer trainees during their district training.
The format for carrying out the detailed survey of one village is fairly exhaustive and the officer trainees are expected to conduct 40 household surveys. Though the rigour of field work for the survey varies from trainee to trainee, some very useful data and information is gathered about the performance of poverty alleviation programmes through these reports. At times some of these reports do appear very impressionistic but in many other cases rigour of the survey design is followed very carefully. In most cases the officer trainees spend 10 days in the village before writing the report. The officer trainees being new to the governmental system, are not really defensive about the programmes and are fairly objective in their comments about the performance in the field. In fact, many a time the remarks made by some of the trainees are very sweeping. This makes analysing these reports a difficult task. They have greater value as micro studies and that is why we have brought out the micro and macro findings in two volumes. Based on the micro studies it is possible to arrive at some general conclusions and make some suggestions regarding the programmes.