Local organization for rural development : analysis of Asian experience

Resources and technology are certainly also independent variables affecting the extent and pace of rural development. But for purposes of analysis they focused on local organization, examining its relation to rural development performance, measured in terms of agricultural productivity and various dimensions of rural welfare: health, nutrition, education, security, employment, participation and equity. The 16 cases were analyzed in terms of local organizational linkage -- the extent and effectiveness of communication and interaction between different levels of organization down to the local level -- and relevance to rural development functions (see Tables 2 and 3). This analysis revealed a rather clear division between the "more organized" and the "less organized" cases, and our subsequent analysis of rural development performance compared the two sets of cases. In analyzing rural development performance, in terms of agricultural productivity and various aspects of rural welfare, sharp and consistent differences were found between the two groups, though variations within the groups were not always so clearly associated with differences in degree of organization.