In consultation with the Planning Commission of India, states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh were selected for the study. The government-pioneered projects from time to time have changed in approach and strategy. These shifts in the policy decisions are taken on the basis of experiences from existing programmes and to reach out to the last person in the last row. Experience tells that most of the policy decisions are taken with a macro perspective and a very little attention is paid to the micro level issues.
Although there is success story of micro level rural development planning and implementation, which is well known and documented but this has been an effort of individual. Projects implemented and managed by the government agency and are a success today are yet to be documented and promoted. Therefore it is essential to document such good practices so that a mechanism to replicate them at a wider level could be evolved.