Janani Rajbhandari Thapa
Theme paper
April 25, 2011
Importance of early identification of project constituents to maximize outcomes and
sustainability of agriculture and rural development projects
This paper discusses the need for and the benefits of an early understanding of the
various constituencies within project beneficiaries to achieve maximum impact in
agriculture and rural development projects. The hypothesis behind this discussion is that
early recognition of participant heterogeneity will allow projects to achieve maximum
impact by enabling them to design suitable sets of activities and benchmarks for the
various constituents. It is this author’s contention that, without a clear early process to
identify the various constituents and their needs, abilities, limitation and expectations of
the project, project success will be limited. The project will not succeed in making areawide and long-lasting changes.
Lack of beneficiary participation was identified as a reason for the failure of many
development efforts during the 1980s.1 While development proponents have been
recommending processes to understand the various constituents’ abilities and needs for
many decades, the lack of early participant identification continues to be a problem in
21st century development activities. Despite attempts to identify and budget the active
participation of a variety of constituents in a project area, rural development projects still
fall short of maximum development outcomes. The problem this paper seeks to address is
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http://www.fao.org/sd/PPdirect/PPre0074.htm
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that constituent identification, program planning and bench mark identification do not
occur early enough in the process or at the micro-constituent level to drive the whole
program to a successful conclusion.
Participation: why and when?
Involving constituents in the project can take place in different stages of a project cycle.
It can be both a means and an end; as a means, it is a process in which people and
communities cooperate and collaborate in development projects and programs. As an
end, participation is a process that empowers people and communities to acquire longlasting skills, knowledge and experience, leading to personal ownership of productive
practices and to greater self-reliance and self-management.
Expectations of constituents’ participation must be tailored to the skills, abilities, and
limitations of the various constituents.
Expectations must take into account the
constituents’ own cost/benefit analysis of their participation: What will they get out of
the project? Is it worth the time involved? Do they have the abilities and resources to
devote to the project? If project designers do not have a clear understanding of the
variety of constituents and build in program activities, tools, and benchmarks that address
each constituencies’ abilities and limitations early in the process, this author contends
that the project will fall short of its maximum outcomes.
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What are the sources of constituents’ heterogeneity?
Constituents of agriculture and rural development projects are made up of a diverse array
of participants. Diversity in abilities, skills, resources, and limitations arise from such
cultural factors as the following:
1. Religious beliefs and practices,
2. Caste: higher/lower, touchable/untouchable,
3. Gender: male/female/bisexual/homosexual,
4. Ethnicity/tribal status,
5. Education status: educated/uneducated,
6. Social status: upper class/lower class,
7. Income Type: permanent/temporary/wage labor,
8. Fixed and Mobile asset holdings: wealthy/poor/nomad,
9. Security: access to wealth/savings,
10. Risk liabilities and risk aversion abilities,
11. Family construction: male/female household, no. of children, no. of earning
members,
12. Employment status: employed/unemployed,
13. Accessibility to natural resources: distance/access.
Projects often recognize these characteristics during the implementation phase of the
project cycle – usually as impediments to success - when project activities have already
been designed, and it is too late to re-work them. Lack of early and clear recognition of
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diversity leads to the failure of some constituent groups; this, in turn demoralizes those
groups and makes them wary of future projects.
While the need to address constituent differences is more obvious in a society with
significant caste and gender discrimination, it is also important in societies without such
overt discrimination.
Why is there a need to address heterogeneity?
The following examples will illustrate the need to understand heterogeneity among
project constituents early in the project planning stages rather than in the implementation
stages.
Examples of Poor Constituent Identification
The Swiss Development Corporation implemented a project in eight remote western
districts of Nepal in 2004 with an overall goal to improve and sustain livelihoods of
people in remote rural areas through agriculture development.
“The project is guided by a business approach, whereby seed production is developed as
a self-sustaining and profit-making venture involving farmers as well as enterprises. To
ensure the participation of disadvantaged groups and facilitate their access to benefits, a
special incentive package was introduced. Only technical assistance is provided on a
continuous basis during the project period, whereas the participating farmers allocate
their land and workforce for the vegetable seed production and volunteer their time as
participants in various capacity-building programs.”2
2 http://www.swiss-cooperation.admin.ch/nepal/en/Home/Vegetable_Seed_Project_Phase_2/vegetable_seeds_more
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Twenty percent of the project budget was allocated for activities such as training to
promote participation of the disadvantaged sectors of the population. However, neither
equal participation nor equal benefits within this population were observed during this
author’s field visits in 2007. While project planners had targeted sectors of the
disadvantaged population and had set aside a large proportion of the budget to assist these
people, project planners had not identified early the actual abilities and limitations of this
population.
The truly disadvantaged population in the project area was made up of farmers who did
not have land enough to produce sufficient volume of seed production to be able to sell
their seeds at market. Understanding the limitations of these farmers’ holdings would
have contributed to program planning that would have recognized the limitations (not
owning enough land as a fixed asset necessary to produce seed in sufficient volume) and
developed plans to overcome them.
The project could have designed activities to
aggregate these small land holding farmers into production groups such that each
production group would have ample volume to sell on the market. Instead, it was simply
not possible for these farmers with little land to gain much from the vegetable seed
production training.3 They were inadvertently set up for failure, despite the project’s
stated goal and the associated budget set aside to help them.
The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) faced similar challenges in
many of their early development programs in 1980s.
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Personal field experience
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“Many of our earlier programs had disappointing results, due to our mistaken belief that
entire village communities, regardless of social and economic differences, could come
together in a combined effort for mutual self-help. The reality was that the richer sections
of the community used these early cooperatives to their exclusive advantage. They
derived maximum benefit from agricultural extension and our other programs, while the
poor remained on the fringes.”4
BRAC decided to include all villagers from the community in their cooperative program
in hopes of fostering a greater sense of community among the different social and
economic groups in the village. Unfortunately, the goal of improving the situation of the
poorest members of the community got lost in BRAC’s attempts to bring various
members of the community together as a heterogeneous group. Thus the inclusionary
motives of BRAC that sought to incorporate members from all levels of society resulted
in a tradeoff that failed to fully empower the poorest members of the community,
thwarting the original intent of the program. Had BRAC been able to identify and bring
each homogeneous constituent group together to identify and plan their own appropriate
program activities, benchmarks, and outcomes, BRAC would have likely had early
success.
An example of a successful program not being able to address its equity objective comes
from the Community Forestry Program of Nepal.
Nepal’s community forestry program was started with the dual objective of forest
restoration and livelihood improvement for all at the local level. In Nepal, the forest is an
Abed, FH and AMR Chowdhury. “The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee:
How BRAC Learned to Meet Rural People’s Needs through Local Action.” Reasons for
Hope. ed. Anirudh Krishna, Norman Uphoff, and Milton J. Esman. West Hartford,
Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 1997, pg. 43.
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integral part of the agriculture system; extensive deforestation had undermined soil
quality and forced villagers to walk farther and farther to obtain useful forest products.
Community forestry has worked well to achieve its goals to prevent further soil erosion
and re-plant and sustain forests near populations groups. However, community forestry
has not been able to address its equity goals.
“One challenge for equity and sustaining livelihoods is to design an inclusive process of
decision-making and benefit-sharing so that the poor, women and disadvantaged group
members may benefit from the forests and the funds of the Community Forest User
Groups.”5
Part of this failure arises from the inability of community forestry policies to have
different activity guidelines for different users. A graduate research thesis undertaken in
the Western district (Kapilvastu) of Nepal by the consultant in 2007 revealed that timber
– the most valuable forest product - is harvested primarily by the wealthiest Community
Forestry User Group (CFUG) members. The poor CFUG members have higher demand
for fodder and fuel wood, which is drastically lower in value compared to timber from
community forests. All forest products (timber, fodder, fuel-wood) are made available to
the user group members at subsidized price.
Each CFUG is heterogeneous in nature, representing everyone in the community. Each
member is required to contribute a certain number of hours to meetings, trainings, and
labor to maintain the forest. The poor members rarely attended meetings because they felt
that they were not heard, as the wealthier and higher caste CFUG members monopolized
the meetings. However participation in forest maintenance works was exactly the
opposite. Poor members tended to contribute work hours because the Community Forest
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http://www.ijsf.org/dat/art/vol01/ijsf_vol1_no1_03_kanel_nepal.pdf
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was opened for maintenance at times they could also collect fodder and firewood. While
all CFUG members contributed equal time, the poor and low-caste members contributed
their required time in labor; the burden of forest maintenance fell to them.
Each CFUG member has access to forestry products, sold to them at subsidized prices by
the government. Wealthy group members have the financial means to purchase the
highest-value products (timber), which also have the potential for high resale value.
These wealthier members continue to increase their wealth through the use of forest
products, while the poor members continue at subsistence levels.
This experience shows how the equity goals of the project failed as a result of not
understanding the population properly. As with the Swiss development project cited
above, the Nepal forestry program did not understand the limitations of the poorest
members of the community and was not able to design the project to maximize their
ability to prosper. Simple measures, such as providing a mechanism for homogeneous
sub-groups, or a mechanism for the poorer members to combine their meager resources to
purchase some high-return forest products, and additional training to assist the poorest
members to understand the benefits of more than gathering subsistence items, would have
contributed to their ability to increase their incomes.
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Examples of Successful Early Constituent Identification
Participation from the ground level was a key to success for the Orangi Pilot Project
(OPP) in Pakistan, where local residents were involved to solve their own sanitation
problems.6 The Orangi Township is Pakistan's largest katchi abadi (slum). Located in the
western part of the city, this katchi abadi was established in the 1960s and it now covers
an area of 8,000 acres. The 100,000 houses in the area are home to approximately one
million people belonging to lower and lower-middle income groups. Like other slum
localities in Pakistan, Orangi Township lacked all civic amenities until 1980. The OPP is
a story of local people organizing themselves and taking initiatives on their own to build
and take care of basic infrastructure in their community.7
Initiatives taken by Muhammad Yunus and F. H. Abed in Bangladesh, Akhtar Hameed
Khan in Pakistan, V. Kurien in India, P.A. Kiriwandeniya in Sri Lanka, Mechai
Viravaidya in Thailand and Ledea Ouedraogo and Bernard Lecomte in the Sahel were all
successful. They recounted diverse initiatives to open up multiple opportunities for their
less advantaged compatriots. All these leaders started by understanding their
constituencies very closely. For example, many of us have heard how Muhammad
Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, began visiting villages near the University of
Chittagong where he taught in the mid-1970s, seeking to understand what kept the people
there submerged in poverty. Using his own resources he began experimenting to see
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Class Discussion
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http://casestudies.lead.org/index.php?cscid=142
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whether even quite small loans could help reduce the burdens oppressing the poor. 8 His
approach proved highly successful, lifting people from poverty by providing access to
affordable small loans to start small businesses.
Another example of success attributable to understanding the constituents comes from the
case of Amul Dairy Cooperative in India. Two keys to success can be learned from this
dairy cooperative, which has established itself as an outstanding model for rural
development. First, their model identified that farmers in the region were scattered, with
many small-scale dairy farmers. To improve these farmers’ abilities to sell their milk,
Amul developed a network of collection centers to collect milk. This collection network
aggregated the sellers’ production and enabled each small farmer to participate easily and
equally with large farmers, regardless of caste or other perceived differences. Each
farmer was paid according to the volume they brought to the collection center.
Milk producers from high caste, low-caste, male, female, and un-touchables queued in
the same line outside their collection center early in the morning to have their milk tested
and collected regardless of the prevalent cultural norms of segregation according to
gender, caste and ethnic differences. Each constituency recognized that the full value of
the collection center would not be achieved unless each constituency had equal access.
Uphoff, N., Esman, M. J., Krishna, A., Reasons for Success: Learning from Instructive
Experiences in Rural Development (International Development). West Hartford,
Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 1998, pg. 47.
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Second, Amul’s success with the collection centers encouraged farmers to invest further
in their livestock because they knew that they could sell the increased production. Taking
into consideration the farmers’ scarce resources and inability to take risks to improve
production, Amul followed a series of low-risk interventions to assist farmers to
eventually increase production. Breed improvement was followed by feed improvement,
which was followed by accessible veterinary care for their milk producing livestock.9
Conclusion
Despite a massive shift in priorities and thinking which has been taking place in the rural
development paradigm, from an emphasis on building infrastructure to people and
capabilities,10 not much attention has been given to identifying the human aspects of
project dynamics early enough.
While factors relating to economic/financial and technical aspects do play an important
role in achieving project outcomes, it is important to recognize the importance of early
active participation of all constituencies within the rural population. Understanding the
needs, abilities, limitations and expectations of the various constituents to form the basis
for project activities and approaches that will maximize the opportunities for all
constituents is crucial. Without tailoring the project to benefit all participants, rural
9
The AMUL Dairy Cooperatives: Putting the Means of Development into the Hands of
Small Producers in India, by V. Kurien, in Reasons for Hope, 105-119
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Chambers, R. The Challenge to Change, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last,
pp. 1-14
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development initiatives are likely to fall short of their output goals, unlikely to be
sustainable in the long run, and rural inequities are unlikely to be redressed.
Thus, the overall aim of understanding the differences among project constituents is to
ensure active participation of people in the achievement of sustainable agriculture and
rural development by designing activities that can maximize outcome based results.
There have been calls for a better understanding of the heterogeneity among constituents
for success in development projects. The plan of action for people's participation in rural
development published by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in 1990
emphasized the identification of beneficiaries based on their differences.
“It is for each country to identify target groups, intended beneficiaries, and their needs,
and set priorities taking into account its own specific conditions and capacities as well as
the socio-economic relations which influence the type and quality of participation”.11
However, calls like this do not emphasize the crucial importance of understanding
constituent heterogeneity and the associated needs, abilities, limitations and expectations
from the early project planning stage. The case examples presented in this paper attempt
to attract the interest of researchers in analyzing the difference in intended project
outcomes, when project constituencies are understood and considered from the early
project planning stage.
A clear call to action and requirement for project developers to understand the
heterogeneity of project constituents early in the project cycle will lead to:
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http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5587e/x5587e0n.htm
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1. Systemic and broad assessment of problem identification which includes the
needs, abilities, limitations and expectations of the various constituencies within
the overall project;
2. Definition of project activities which (may) differ in substance and approach
among the project beneficiaries;
3. Identification within the overall project of benchmarks which may differ for each
constituency;
4.
Sustainable, widespread success in achieving the project’s outcome and equity
goals, improving the overall welfare of the area’s population.
If the development community is able to institutionalize early planning protocols that
require heterogeneous constituent identification (needs, abilities, limitations, and
expectations), this author contends that project outcomes will improve for the spectrum
of participants and that the overall goals of the project will achieve sustainable and
widespread success.
This is a very good paper, you explore the topic well, bring in new examples and use the
course cases well. You writing is also very good, but where is your works sited page?
Writing and Exposition
Use of Concepts
Analytical approach
Organization and Conclusiveness
Significance for Development
28/30
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