106 Agricultural Research and Productivity 



Seven districts were selected in 1960-62, a further eight in 

 1962-64, and the sixteenth in 1967-68. The districts were selected 

 under the following criteria: 



1. The district had to have assured water supply. 



2. It should have a minimum of natural hazards. 



3. It should have well-developed village institutions like 

 cooperatives and panchcyats. 



4. It should have maximum potential for increasing agricul- 

 tural production within a comparatively short time. 



This selection of districts was clearly not random. The supposi- 

 tion implicit in most discussions of the program is that the dis- 

 tricts selected were ''most likely to succeed." In fact, our evalua- 

 tion shows them to have been 'Meast likely to succeed" in the 

 context of what this program could be expected to achieve. 



The program was, in general, a massive effort. It was also 

 relatively expensive. The actual expenditures by the Ford Foun- 

 dation and the Government of India have not explicitly been 

 made public. We can, however, come up with a reasonable esti- 

 mate. D. Brown reports a figure of $30 million for the first five 

 years of the program (Brown, 1971, p. 14). This is consistent with 

 the state budget data for this period, which indicate a Wi to 2 

 million rupee annual expenditure in each of the fifteen districts. 

 (These data do not include administrative and training expen- 

 ditures.) The state budget data reflect an increase in the spending 

 in the second five years of roughly 50 percent. To date, then, this 

 program has been approximately a $100 million experiment. It 

 cost roughly one half as much as the research activities in India 

 devoted to improved crop production for the entire country dur- 

 ing the 1960s (Mohan, Jha, and Evenson 1973, table 1). 



Prior Assessments 



A number of assessments of the I ADP program have been made, 

 including several by the Government of India (G.O.I. , 1963, 67, 

 70a) and one independent assessment by Dorris D. Brown 

 (Brown, 1971). 



The Government of India's assessments review the perfor- 

 mance of each district in administrative and physical terms, e.g. 



