major provider of agricultural advisory services in India. A nationally representative survey published in 2005, the State of the Indian Farmer Survey, found that only input dealers, whose advisory services are presumably limited to the inputs they sell, have substantial coverage, reaching 13 percent of the households nationwide as a source of information about new technologies (NSSO 2005). The survey suggests that agricultural extension agents reach less than 6 percent of farmers and that less than 1 percent of farmers use private agencies or NGOs as a source of information about new technologies. These findings point to a major constraint that is not adequately addressed by the ATMA reform model: India’s departments of agriculture no longer seems to have adequate staff numbers to reach farmers (male or female), and the private sector or NGOs had not filled this gap by 2005. It remains unclear to what extent private sector initiatives that use new information technologies, such as the e-choupal approach by Indian Tobacco Company, have increased access to agricultural knowledge and information since 2005. E-choupals are village Internet kiosks, from which farmers can access agricultural information. They also facilitate the sale of farm produce. Drinking Water Supply Drinking water supply is one of the few services that many states, including Karnataka, decentralized to the lowest tier of local government, the gram panchayats. In Karnataka, functional responsibility for drinking water supply depends on the source of rural drinking water supply. Maintenance of mini–water supply schemes and piped water supply schemes is the responsibility of block panchayats; responsibility for borewells with hand pumps rests with the gram panchayats. A variety of schemes for the provision of drinking water supply and sanitation facilities to rural residents are implemented by the central government (for example, the Accelerated Rural Water Supply program, the Total Sanitation Campaign, and sector reform projects) and the states (for example, the Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation project). In 1999, the government of India introduced reforms in the rural water supply and sanitation and promoted programs for institutionalizing communitybased drinking water supply management. The approach incorporates three basic principles: adoption of a demand-driven community-participation approach based on the empowerment of villagers to plan, design, implement, and manage water supply schemes; a shifting of the role of the government from direct service delivery to that of a facilitator; and partial capital cost sharing and shouldering of full responsibility of operation and maintenance by users (Government of India 2003). Estimates of the effects and effectiveness of these principles in improving drinking water supply are not available. However, it appears that the government is still an important source of drinking water supply. Paul and others (2006) show that 80 percent of households in India received water from protected
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GENDER AND GOVERNANCE IN RURAL SERVICES