District-level Monitoring of all Programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development


The Ministry of Rural Development implements through the State Governments/ DRDAs/PRIs, a number of programmes for poverty alleviation, employment generation, habitat and area development, infrastructure creation and social security aimed at the benefit of the rural poor. Over the years, the allocation of funds for Rural Development Programmes has been substantially increased. Increasing concern has been expressed by different quarters about the flow of benefits of these programmes to the rural poor. Therefore, the need for strengthening the monitoring mechanisms of the Programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development has been repeatedly stressed in various fora and the media. The Plan Document also suggested various steps for improving the programme formulation and implementation, which interalia, include improved monitoring and evaluation, tightening linkages between the evaluators and the users of the findings, attaching greater weightage to follow-up action, ensuring wide publicity about the programmes and fostering methods of participatory evaluation and monitoring. The quality of the delivery of the programmes is to be ensured by resorting to innovative and effective measures of monitoring the same at the District level. It has been observed that the authorities co-ordinating the programme implementation at the grassroots levels sometimes face difficulties in effective monitoring of the programmes owing to physical constraints, or lack of trained manpower and other infrastructure. Consequently, complete, timely and accurate information about the financial and physical achievements in respect of these programmes at the District and lower levels are frequently not available. This creates difficulties in accountability and also leads to disruption of the process of release of funds.

As part of strengthening this monitoring mechanism of the programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development, on a pilot basis, District Level Monitoring was introduced, in December 2001 utilising the services of independent agencies working in various states. CMD was entrusted with 3 districts in Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha and Ernakulam which were later changed to Pathanamthitta, Idukki & Kozhikode in October 2003) and four districts in Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore, Erode, Madurai, Tirunelveli). Presently the seven Districts that are being monitored are Tirunelveli, Erode, Dharmapuri, Cuddalore, Thiruvannamalai, Tiruchirappalli and Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu. This exercise includes collection and submission of information on the funds received by the District Implementing Agency and reporting of information on physical achievement under various programmes to the Ministry every month. Quarterly qualitative reports are also submitted once in three months based on rigorous physical verification of the assets created (on a sample basis) during the last three years at the field level.