Components of M&E System

1. Baseline Survey
2. Concurrent/Process Monitoring
3. Concurrent Evaluation
4. Final Evaluation.

Baseline survey

Baseline survey and information collection consists of the facts and figures collected at the initial stages of a project. The M&E consulting teams would collect a sizable sample from 66 modernized sub-basin under TN IAM Project. The baseline study covers a sample of tanks in Phase I and in Phase II stage of the project, modernized under the TN IAM project. Multi-stage Random Sampling method will be used in selecting tanks from all 66 sub-basins. Around 110 tanks will be selected as sampling tanks. Further, information pertaining to the socio-economic context of the farmers such as drawing water from these tanks, application of modern irrigation technology like drip and Sprinkler irrigation, climate resilient agriculture and modern farming techniques, allied agriculture activities like livestock and fisheries will be collected through a village profile survey questionnaire.

It will be conducted by executing the designed questionnaire by the field surveyors in the M&E consultancy team. The surveyors will visit the households selected by the survey supervisors and establish a rapport with the informant before executing the questionnaire. This survey will record the annual income and expenditure of the household for the base year, i.e., 2021 along with recording economic assets and land resources.

It will be carried out through PRA technique involving WUA members and field level personnel from the implementing agencies for all project villages including the sample villages. The survey will cover demographic details, social composition, irrigation Facilities, access to market, social capital/ CBOs, human capital, development infrastructures, agricultural practices, and economic activities in the village.

The tank profile survey will cover the various practices. Hence, the tank survey will be carried out by the supporting staff along with the field supervisors in M&E consultancy team. They will work under guidance of the agriculture expert and agriculture economist. The canal profile survey however will be restricted to the sample stretch. The canal survey will cover all relevant issues such as design details, irrigation efficiency, operation and maintenance and cropping pattern etc.

The rapid appraisal of the project benefit will be carried out for phase-I sub-basins and such other places where project implementation is started without completion of a baseline survey. Through this rapid appraisal, the project beneficiaries will be involved in identifying project benefits and defining them in relation to the pre-project situation. The proceedings of this PRA exercise will be recorded through a specially designed schedule that will cover all key indicators discussed for baseline survey. The field level staff of the implementing agencies will also be involved in this rapid appraisal process. This rapid appraisal process will be carried out for tanks selected in the sample frame.

Process and Concurrent Monitoring

Concurrent monitoring of project activities will be enabled with help of Project Monitoring Information System (PPIS) software. This software facilitate on-line reporting of all activities performed by implementing agencies, enable the implementing agencies to draw annual plan and also report the progress of implementation on a monthly basis.

The data from the concurrent monitoring and concurrent evaluation will be used to identify issues and area to be visited by the subject experts in the M&E team. Each expert will keep a track of the progress of project implementation and achievements by online access to the PPIS. Thus, the monthly missions of the M&E team will be guided by a structured process of analysis and diagnosis.

Concurrent evaluation

The project plan has a set of predetermined intermediate outcome indicators for various components. The concurrent evaluation will be carried out once in six month intervals for measuring outcome of intermediate indicators. The data for these indicators will be collected through PPIS software. The M&E consulting team will undertake a survey once in aforementioned time period and assess the outcome of indicators, and report the findings with help of PPIS.

Final evaluation

The M&E team would evaluate the impact of project on various stakeholders through the same sampling techniques and indicators used in baseline survey. The end-term evaluation of the project will be through an overall impact evaluation study carried out in the same sample frame on which the baseline survey was conducted. The Impact Evaluation survey will use the same survey instruments to record the change. In addition to this, the evaluation will use all the data available, viz., baseline data, concurrent monitoring data, and outcome indicator tracking data to formulate additional questions that the evaluation study may address.