As part of augmenting the post-harvest infrastructure in the agriculture market yards of Odisha, the state government in March 2003 entrusted the Orissa State Agricultural Marketing (OSAM) Board with the task of procuring various advanced packaging equipment like paddy cleaners, automatic weighing and bagging machines and installing them at the market yards/markets of the Regulated Market Committees (RMCs) in the state. The idea was to enable farmers to improve the quality and packaging paddy brought for sale by them to the state-owned market yards. These equipment were to clean raw paddy by mechanized means to conform to fair average quality (FAQ), a standard prescribed by the Government of India (GOI). This, in turn, would help farmers in selling their produce to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) which would otherwise not accept paddy below the stipulated FAQ. It would also help farmers escape harassment from private rice-millers who bought their paddy at the market yards by paying much less and after a lot of delay. Hence, the proposed intervention made a lot of economic sense. It was the first such intervention in the agricultural marketing sector in the state. I was the Member Secretary (the Chief Executive) of the OSAM Board. The decision was conveyed to all the secretaries (chief executives) of the RMCs, who were the cutting-edge field level officials responsible for ensuring installation and operation of the equipment and subsequently encouraging farmers to make use of them. After following the due procedure and elaborate consultations with agriculture scientists and engineers, among others, the Board finally procured 15 such equipment on a trial basis at a cost of Rs. 16 million between August and December 2003. The procured equipment was installed (October 2003–November 2004) at 15 RMCs. Besides, a further expenditure of Rs. 4.3 million was incurred on civil and electrical works to make the equipment operational. However, later, as the paddy procurement operation progressed, it was learnt that only one paddy cleaner and automatic weighing and bagging machine installed at Bolangir was in use while all the other equipment (15 paddy cleaners and 14 automatic weighing and bagging machines) remained idle, as the farmers did not come forward to use these facilities. When enquired, the secretaries (who were the chief executives) of the RMCs stated that the farmers were not interested in using the equipment. I soon drew up and implemented elaborate plans to educate the farmers about the economic benefits that would accrue to them if they used the new equipment; but that also did not help. Despite my intense personal involvement, zeal, devotion and commitment, where did I go wrong? Was it due to inadequate consultation with the men who were to actually implement the new intervention or complete absence of participation by thefarmers directly either in the policy and decision-making process or during the intermediate implementation stage (due to paucity of time)? Did I underestimate the role of other stakeholders—both state (secretaries of the RMCs) and non-state actors (millers), or was it the undue haste shown by me in implementing the intervention and that too taking all decisions centrally at Bhubaneswar, the state capital? The latter conveyed the impression in the districts to all and sundry, including the collectors, that the reasons for this intervention were laced with vested interests and corruption. Did over-centralization in purchase distance the involvement of the field functionaries, who may have developed their own suspicion on the role played by the Board? The farmers produce to sell, not to clean their produce. Hence, was absence of multiple buyers for their produce (absence of usual market forces in ‘economic’ sense) a much more compelling reason for their disinterest in using the equipment? Or, economic logic alone did not make sense to the farmers and there were other factors responsible? To this extent, did I miss the nerve of the problem? It was also not clear as to why the success of the intervention at Bolangir RMC did not get replicated in the other RMCs? What are the factors responsible for replication of success in a social arena and involving a socio-economic issue such as this?

In another such intervention involving the installation of cooling chambers to provide price hedging support to vegetable growers throughout the state, the intervention never took off though its economic logic appeared to be fundamentally very strong. Both the administrative intention behind the intervention as well as the need for it, were questioned, albeit silently, by the district-level actors (the secretaries of RMCs). The farmers did not know what use these machines could be to them, when their immediate need was to get some money after effecting a sale, and not to store their produce for getting a better price later when the market situation improved. In fact, when I visited some of these cooling chambers to take stock of the impact of the intervention, I was pretty astonished and anguished to find cement bags (and not vegetables) inside the chamber. The situation was made worse by the secretaries of RMCs, who were supposed to be disseminating the information about the machines to the farmers, but did not do so. The question is why did they not do that? Were the farmers not adequately consulted?

In another case, I supervised an evaluation of the impact of implementation of Revised Long-Term Action Plan (RLTAP) in Kalahandi–Bolangir–Koraput (KBK) region of Odisha (one of the poorest regions in India). In terms of budget, it was one of the single largest government interventions in a concentrated manner anywhere in the country. The Koraput, Bolangir and Kalahandi (KBK) region, comprising eight districts in the state and with more than 87% of its population involving nearly 1.2 million families living below the poverty line, is also the most backward regions in the country. The state government, on the advice of the Planning Commission, ¹ formulated the plan with an original outlay of more than Rs. 55.27 billion which increased to Rs. 78.50 billion over a period of nine years from 1998–1999 to 2006–2007. The plan had three long-term development outcomes, namely poverty alleviation, drought proofing and quality of life. Against available funds of Rs. 27.63 billion during 2002–2007 under eight sub-schemes of the scheme covered in the evaluation study, Rs. 25.41 billion were utilized as of March 2007.