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Jim Hancock, an FAO natural resources officer, spoke about FAO’s role in evaluating the World Bank-funded Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project in India, aimed at empowering the rural poor socially and economically, and the advantage of looking at the results with a fresh pair of eyes.

What were some of the project’s biggest achievements?

I’m quite experienced with livelihood projects across the whole of Asia and I have to say this one was extraordinary. Bihar is still one of the poorest states in India. There’s a lot of malnourishment, social marginalization and migration, and many people are deeply indebted to moneylenders or landlords, which can sink families for generations.

So the starting conditions were extra tough. But the project, which began in 2007, was scaled up halfway because it was doing so well. It reached 1.8 million women through self-help community groups across 10,000 villages (and growing). And these groups have federated. The project transformed the networking capacity of these women and their ability to save, rotate funds and link into banks for productive loans. This was a huge leap. Women who once depended on high-cost moneylenders can now get money from the banks through their groups and as individuals. Incomes have improved. And the increased confidence and aspirations among the women is astonishing.

I was told a number of times that the whole system worked on such a large scale because of peer-to-peer support and trust – trust from the communities in what the project was trying to achieve, trust between members and their groups and even between groups in different states, trust between the project staff and groups and decision-makers. This allowed for an openness and flexibility to new approaches, also critical to success.

How were you involved?

The World Bank asked us to help them with the end of project evaluation. They see us as a trusted partner, but also as an independent specialist agency. Our job was to pull together all of the data – and there were massive amounts of data – to see if these positive changes, such as reduced debt, increased incomes, household spending and food security, were actually happening and why. Our role was to tell the story from the project’s beginning, and to hear from as many stakeholders as possible in a short time. Getting solid information on all of the different parameters, such as expenditure, income, nutrition and health, behaviour change, changes in household relationships, etc., was hugely challenging, but we had great collaboration and support.

We conducted workshops to draw out lessons, and interviewed large numbers of people, including women from many different types of households. We structured our household and group surveys to be as robust as possible. As outsiders, we could look at the project with a fresh pair of eyes and really probe and question the data, similar to investigative journalism in which you crosscheck the story to make sure there are no major gaps or inconsistencies.

In the process, we also focused on building the monitoring and evaluation capacity of the project team, which is a society set up by the State of Bihar. They would not have had as much success as they’ve had if they weren’t doing monitoring and evaluation so well already, but they were willing to learn more, to understand better what was happening under the different activities. They work 100 miles an hour every day on implementation, so this evaluation was also a chance for them to step back and reflect.  

What were some of the innovations?

One of the many positive spin-offs from the project is that these community groups now act like watchdogs for their members’ needs, helping them to access other entitlements such as pensions and insurance, which wasn’t in the original project design. They are able to procure food and kerosene and manage public distribution systems, cutting out intermediaries. They are using cheap handheld pico-projectors to provide extension information to members, using videos made by community members themselves. The State is increasingly depending on these groups to deliver key services, rather than the bureaucratic systems, which often don’t reach the people most in need. Innovation fora bringing together a wide spectrum of potential partners with new intervention ideas was in itself an important innovation.

What’s next?

Our partners didn’t view this evaluation as the end, but rather a review point to learn lessons and shape future programmes. It wasn’t an FAO project, but it is leading to interesting areas of collaboration. An Investment Centre colleague, for example, is looking at how changes brought on by the project are impacting diets and nutrition, and is advising on baseline data and methodology for integrating nutrition into follow-up projects. Lesson notes are being prepared.

Colleagues involved in FAO’s strategic programme to reduce rural poverty have brought people over from Africa to see how these livelihood projects in India are working. Together we are discussing with FAO India how best to support the Antyodaya-National Rural Livelihoods Mission, which is the mother programme for all of these livelihood projects in India, and which builds on the many good lessons from this Bihar project. We’re looking at strengthening capacity to monitor and evaluate on a regular basis, rather than just at project end. We’re also looking at ways to improve targeting to benefit the poorest and most marginalized households, including the strengthening of inclusive value chain approaches.