Why development fails: The evaluation gap in Nepal's subsistence agriculture

The rationality of farmer decision-making within traditional environments is widely accepted. This paper introduces a conceptual model for delineating interactions among income, employment and nutrition that explain in large part the living standards in a developing agricultural economy. Given farmer rationality, any development effort requires intervention to remove barriers among these components of the standard of living. A case study of Nepal shows that promotion of horticultural crops and government investment in infrastructure and education could dramatically improve living standards even under traditional agricultural production technology. However, the government did not correctly identify barriers to the long-run realization of these goals until recently. The study concludes that the rationality of government programmes themselves must be subjected to additional scrutiny.