A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Science

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1990

It has been the experience that rural development programs have not been successful in generating income and employment for the rural people. Even when they succeed, the benefit is mostly accrued to the rural rich. This was due mainly to sectoral orientation of such programs. The Household Production System Program, a component of Rapti IRD Project, adopted a different approach, household orientation to overcome this. This study attempts to assess how far it was successful to generate income and employment for its beneficiaries and who were the beneficiaries, the rural rich or the poor. Before and after design was used to evaluate the program comparing two HPS sites, Tulsipur and Satbariya. The findings reveal that the income and employment of the beneficiaries of both sites have been significantly increased after the program. The income per household has risen relatively more in Tulsipur because of the high prices of the HPS products while the employment has increased comparatively more in Satbariya. However, most of the beneficiaries who benefited much from the program were found to be the rural rich as in the case of other rural development programs. The extension strategy used by the program was found to favor the rich farmers . Thus it is concluded that though the program was successful to generate the income and employment of the beneficiaries, it failed from rural development point of view to alleviate the poverty. Therefore, if the program intends to help the rural poor, it should select as the target group those who fall below the poverty line fixed by the Basic Needs Program; they should be given group-personality which will make them capable of benefiting from the program; extension strategy of the program sh6uld focus on the rural poor; and the marketing and credit facilities should be improved to enable them to benefit.