Policy-relevant and up-to-date, Rural Development deals systematically with all aspects of socioeconomic rural development, using India as a case study. The Second Edition includes an integrated treatment of the principles, policies and management of rural development; new research and statistical data; illustrations and examples from current situations; the latest measures of rural development; and a new methodology for project monitoring and evaluation.

A key to understanding why some rural development policies succeed and some fail is found in this book. The editors contend that established economic models are inadequate to interpret the behavior of rural markets and nonmarket institutions. This book investigates economic institutions and contractual arrangements in credit, labor, and land markets and analyzes their implications for the behavior of the rural sector. Drawing on 15 short case studies, five overview and nine theoretical chapters explore some of the most pressing problems facing developing countries: how to promote financial integration of the rural sector, how to rationalize the use of land and water, and how to design and administer tax and transfer policies. The book contributes to theory, empirical methodology, and the solution of concrete policy questions.

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods, now known as Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), have been extensively used in development research, action and evaluation. This book is based on the author’s decade-long intensive field experience—each method is explained by drawing on field-based illustrations. The book vividly describes the methods of PRA, highlighting the essential features as well as the application, merits and limitations of each method. Participatory Rural Appraisal: Principles, Methods and Application outlines the application of PRA methodology in areas like participatory poverty assessment, sustainable livelihood analysis, assessment of hunger, vulnerability analysis, organizational analysis, monitoring and evaluation. Separate sections on SWOT analysis and on the method of interview and dialogue are also included in the book. Besides, the author has provided guidelines for sector-wise application of PRA, which would serve as a ready reference for students and practitioners alike. A chapter on the roles of members of a PRA team is another key feature of this book, which would be immensely valuable for students, researchers and academicians working in the areas of social work, rural development, agriculture, and environmental science, and also for NGO workers and trainers and researchers in the development field.

This book investigates the role of wealth in achieving sustainable rural economic development. The authors define wealth as all assets net of liabilities that can contribute to well-being, and they provide examples of many forms of capital – physical, financial, human, natural, social, and others. They propose a conceptual framework for rural wealth creation that considers how multiple forms of wealth provide opportunities for rural development, and how development strategies affect the dynamics of wealth. They also provide a new accounting framework for measuring wealth stocks and flows. These conceptual frameworks are employed in case study chapters on measuring rural wealth and on rural wealth creation strategies. Rural Wealth Creation makes numerous contributions to research on sustainable rural development. Important distinctions are drawn to help guide wealth measurement, such as the difference between the wealth located within a region and the wealth owned by residents of a region, and privately owned versus publicly owned wealth. Case study chapters illustrate these distinctions and demonstrate how different forms of wealth can be measured. Several key hypotheses are proposed about the process of rural wealth creation, and these are investigated by case study chapters assessing common rural development strategies, such as promoting rural energy industries and amenity-based development. Based on these case studies, a typology of rural wealth creation strategies is proposed and an approach to mapping the potential of such strategies in different contexts is demonstrated. This book will be relevant to students, researchers, and policy makers looking at rural community development, sustainable economic development, and wealth measurement.

Until recently the use of agricultural credit as a developmental tool seemed clear and straightforward. Most concerned people believed that increases in the volume of cheap credit were necessary to boost agricultural production, and that the rural poor could be brought into the mainstream of development through supervised credit programs. It seemed that certain ideal types of rural credit institutions offered the promise of meeting farmers' credit needs, and that experience in the industrialized countries with cooperatives and specialized agricultural finance institutions could be effectively transplanted to low-income countries. This collection of readings highlights facets of rural financial markets that have often been neglected in discussions of agricultural credit in developing countries. It moves beyond a narrow concern with the simple provision of credit to a broad consideration of the performance of rural financial markets and of ways to improve the quality and range of financial services for low-income farmers. It reflects new thinking on the design, administration, evaluation and policy framework of rural finance and credit programs in developing countries.