The National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) was established on 12th July 1982 by an Act of Parliament and it has been given the mandate to provide "credit for the promotion of agriculture, small scale industries, cottage and village industries, handicrafts and other rural crafts and other allied economic activities in rural areas with a view to promoting integrated rural development and securing prosperity of rural areas". This mandate covers a wide spectrum and brings in its fold an integration of credit activities with other economic activities like processing, marketing, and other post harvest technologies and technical services etc. NABARD is an Apex development bank primarily involved in providing different types of refinance to the eligible institutions and it also performs developmental and regulatory functions. Over the last 10 years of its existence, NABARD has emerged as crucial source of finance disbursed by the banks for agricultural and rural development. Till the end of March 1992, bank has provided a cumulative refinance of the order of Rs.16,394 crores covering about 96,219 schemes to support investments to the tune of Rs.25,000 crores. This amounts to 45% of the ground level credit disbursed by banks for agricultural and rural development. It operates through State Cooperative Banks, State Land Development Banks, Regional Rural Banks and Commercial Banks and provides refinance for short terms, medium term, as well as long term credit. The above mentioned activities require elaborate planning and control tasks to be performed at various levels in the organization. In order to support the planning and control tasks, district oriented monitoring studies as well as expost evaluation studies are undertaken. This note analyses the process of planning and control.
