This paper has analyzed the ICRISAT experience in implementing village grants to six project villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra through Community Driven Development (CDD) approach. The ICRISAT gave a grant of USD 7000 (` 3.15 lakh) to each of six project villages (2 in Andhra Pradesh and 4 in Maharashtra) to sustain interest of panel households/respondents, and as requests of the villagers wherein they have been providing household socio-economic data to ICRISAT for the past 40 years. A core objective of the village grant was to assess the community's local governance and institutional factors in implementation of the grant in the village. This was implied with the overall development and transformation path of the villages over the past four decades. It was found that even with the small funding of USD 7000, unlike the huge scale funding from government sources, each of the six communities used the fund very effectively, benefiting all sections of communities, including minority and socially weaker sections in the villages. From the six diverse case studies, it was concluded that given the participation of all members, local level choices of project and collective decision in implementation of new interventions will maximize the benefits. These findings from micro-level case studies have huge implications for local governance of public sector interventions in the rural development sector.
Community driven development, village grant, rural development, process documentation research
