New Delhi, April 19 (Inditop.com) Pilot projects which the government often resorts to in order to test the efficacy of what can become a potentially big scheme, hardly serves any purpose and dissipates in no time despite showing promise initially, experts said.
Sudha Pillai, secretary of the planning commission while talking at the conference ‘Scaling up in India: Lessons Learnt and Way Forward’ Monday said: “A pilot project is a seductive concept. You have limited money and a handful of people to implement it. The initial results may be fabulous, but the effect does not last.”
Larry Cooley, president of Management Systems International, an international development consulting firm similarly said that most pilot projects fail to serve their purpose – to be scaled up after a certain period.
“If the motive is to scale up after implementation of a pilot project, then clearly a lot of them are failing because they simply disappear after the initial promising results. The reason is that most of these projects don’t include strategies to scale up,” Cooley said.
Pillai said: “To be more effective, the government should take more initiatives, go for more discussions and embark upon large schemes in the social sector which cover the country and has provisions for areas with special needs like scheduled caste majority areas,” she added.
Taking the example of the government’s flagship scheme for better healthcare, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), Pillai went on to say that workshops should be held before implementing big schemes in order to ensure their efficacy.
Pillai further said: “Most of the pilot projects are dependent on donor agencies for finances, but we forget that these agencies are not going to be around forever to help. Therefore instead of becoming something big, pilot projects remain just what they are”.
