The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme relates the story of participatory development experience in the rural areas of South Asia. The lessons learned in rural development, based on the author's work over the last fifty years in various areas of South Asia, are narrated in the context of "working within the system and living within the means." The basic principles of rural development are described through the process of engaging rural men and women to shape their lives. Operational details of interaction between communities and professionals are combined with inspirational content on the efforts of these people to ignite hope and offer guidelines for changing the lives of the teeming millions by mobilizing their own potential. The book also provides insights into the Aga Khan Rural Suport Programme, an ambitious and successful sustainable development programme that was initiated by Shoaib Sultan at the behest of the Aga Khan, a patron with long term commitment to sustainable development. The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme is a valuable addition to the knowledge on people-centered development and evidence-based advocacy for policy change conducive to sustainable development. It will interest both the professional and general reader interested in poverty alleviation and rural development.

This study examines a particularly successful rural development program: the partnership of the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) and the small farmers of northern Pakistan. The Aga Khan Rural Support Program was established in 1982 to act as a catalyst for the development of rural people living in the high mountain valleys of the Himalayas, Karakorum, and Hindu Kush. The experiment is based upon the premise that rural people can improve their economic and social status through organization at the village level. This experiment in regional development--affecting the lives of nearly 500,000 people--has been outstandingly successful and should provide a model with generalizable lessons for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in economic development. The World Bank has concluded that the Aga Khan Rural Support Program continues to be remarkably successful . . . [and] provides a hopeful prospect that rural development can be made to work. The authors demonstrate that the organizational model found in the AKRSP is sustainable provided prospective beneficiaries participate fully, and that the AKRSP experiment can be used successfully in other rural underdeveloped areas--that the rural poor can be organized to promote their own economic and social development.

The Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) in northern Pakistan has become a model for rural development programmes throughout the country and worldwide. This is the fourth independent evaluation of the AKRSP by the World Bank, which seeks to assess how the programme can best meet present and future challenges and development needs. The assessment covers the period since the programme's initiation in 1982, as well as the period since the last evaluation in 1995. It concentrates on four programme components: community organisations, infrastructure development, natural resource management, and microfinance.

An NGO working for rural development in Gujarat, Madhra Pradesh, and Bihar state.

Includes statistics.