Project plays a pivotal role in fostering and sustaining the tempo of rural development. Project is the essential element for agricultural development. Agricultural project is an investment activity where we spend capital resources to create a productive asset for realizing benefits over time. It consists of a series of organized and supervised activities with start and finish dates that are carried out to meet specific requirements, such as time and cost. Agriculture is the emerging growing sector contributing towards improving farm incomes, enhancing food and nutritional security, reducing rural poverty and accelerating the overall economic growth of our country.

Agricultural project is an investment activity in which financial resources are expended to create capital assets that produce benefits over an extended period of time. Projects are the building blocks of investment plan. The whole complex of activities in the undertaking that uses resources to gain benefits constitutes the agricultural project.

A well planned projects requires pre-feasibility study to explore the opportunity to find out problems, avenues of co-ordination etc. A government being a regulation spells out priotize for national and regional economy and by the frameworks for resource allocation.

Designing is a creative activity. Think of fashion designers or interior decorators, who design clothes or decorate homes. Think of the people who design sports cars or bikes, or the interiors of fancy hotels or corporate offices. They take simple things like fabric, or steel, or plastic and using colors create things that are attractive, useful and a pleasure to live with. Designing a project is equally creative - selecting inputs and managing them in a certain way to achieve objectives.

The word market is derived from the latin word “marcatus” which means “merchandise or trade or a place where business is conducted “. The term market has been widely used in various means, such as: • A place or a building where commodities are bought and sold (e.g. Super market)

Stakeholder is an individual or group that has an interest in any decision or activity of an organization. A stakeholder is a member of groups without whose support the organizationwould cease to exist. Stakeholders are important to every project. Stakeholders are very important because they can have a positive or negative influence on the project with their decisions. A stakeholder is either an individual, group or organization who is impacted by the outcome of a project.

It is a process by which a act of predetermined activities is carried out in a planned manner, with a view to achieve certain establish objectives. To implement a project means to carry out activities proposed with the aim to achieve project objectives and deliver results and outputs. It is a highly complex process and it involves a relationship among several system and variables

Project monitoring is the process of keeping a close eye on the entire project management life cycle and ensuring project activities are on the right track. It is a continuous function that aims primary to provide functionaries with required feedback and early indication of progress or lack of their achievements of intended results.

Project evaluation is a systematic and objective assessment of an ongoing or completed project. The aim is to determine the relevance and level of achievement of project objectives, development effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. It is a time bound exercise that attempt to access, systematically and objectively, the relevant / performance and success of a programme / project.

Project appraisal technique gives details of cost and return of the proposed business. It involves investment of huge amount of capital. There are different project appraisal technique but the most common one is investment analysis or capital budgeting. With this, we can evaluate economic feasibility of different projects.

Management is the coordination and administration of tasks to achieve a goal. Management is a built-in function of business. It is essentially a decision-making process based on information and experience, in order to achieve desired goals and objectives. It involves creating an internal environment. It is the management which puts into use the various factors of production. Therefore, it is the responsibility of management to create such conditions which are conducive to maximum efforts so that people are able to perform their task efficiently and effectively.

1. Project is __________ a) Investment activity b) Create productive assets c) Realising benefits over time d) All of these

References Case Studies