Rural Development and Project Planning

"Grameeya Sanvardhanaya saha Vyapruthi Salasumkaranaya" is a field manual written in 1978 by K. A. S. Wickrama and W. M. Leelasena Sarasavi, now in its updated 2026 edition. The book's relevance is due to Sri Lanka's "Praja Shakthi" program, which aims to push poverty-reduction planning down to grassroots development councils and district coordinating committees.

Authors Wickrama, now an Emeritus Professor in the United States, and Leelasena, a former director of the program, draw from four decades of experience implementing development projects in Sri Lanka. The manual is structured as a project-cycle guide, covering everything from conceptual definitions, data gathering at village level, project identification, feasibility testing, project design, and monitoring implementation.

It emphasizes "results-based monitoring" to ensure accountability. The final chapter provides a practical, worked example of a small irrigation and seed-distribution scheme with verification sources for each input and output. This makes the book highly practical for grassroots officers, village-level development committee members, and district coordinators tasked with writing project proposals under the current "Praja Shakthi" program.

The manual's strength lies in its accessibility, using Sinhala, complete with checklists and templates, all grounded in real-world field experience. While not providing new research data on poverty reduction interventions, the book excels in presenting a method for planning and tracking whatever intervention has been decided upon.

For policymakers, the book serves as a capacity-building tool, enhancing implementation capacity at the point where national policy meets people's lives, but it cannot determine which projects to fund or delve into why past grassroots programs failed. The book's relevance is further highlighted by recent crises in Sri Lanka, where both government and NGOs have struggled to rebuild local implementation capacity.