, along with local practitioners. each team would prepare a package for their respective activities and locations. there is now much more expertise available across the country relative to the situation 35 years ago. along with such a disaggregated but coordinated programmes, there is need for a major new initiative for the rejuvenation of agricultural research that is also regionally distributed. a crash programme is required for the urgent renovation of agricultural universities, which will need to be supported internationally as well. a beginning has already been made by the prime minister ’ s initiative to renew association with the us research system. these universities need to be made respectable again. they will also need to specialize in the activities specific to their locations. the transfer of technology from these rejuvenated universities and from other sources will also have to be specific to each activity and new forms of extension activity will need to be explored to achieve the maximum effectiveness. there is increasing expertise in the private sector and in the cooperative sector so new forms of public private partnerships will have to be explored, just as the national dairy development board innovated in respect of milk. the banking system will also have to explore ways and means of achieving efficient credit delivery to these new agricultural activities along with all their associated activities. as the system develops, the supply chain from farm to market will need to be financed : warehouses, cold storages, rural transportation, refrigerated trucks, along with all the service intermediaries. the efficient delivery of credit in a dispersed manner in rural areas will need to give special attention to the minimization of transaction costs through reduction in layering of intermediaries, much greater use of information technology in information collection, risk assessment and risk monitoring. clearly, a great degree of innovation is called for now with out of the box thinking, away from the past paradigm of directed credit. finally, agricultural diversification and growth is not possible without the provision of rural infrastructure : roads, storage facilities, transportation, telecommunication and power. all of these activities have very high economic returns but, those that have public good characteristics have low financial returns. they are therefore difficult to finance. user charges will have to be used where feasible, but other financing means will need to explored. states like punjab, haryana, tamil nadu and goa built rural roads early and financed them through the imposition of local cesses like the mandi cess. hence there is clear need for the search for new financing mechanisms. investment in and the

, whereas some private delivery is possible, international experience suggests that basic infrastructure ownership has to be with the government, along with regulation and allocation. similar is the case with ports and airports : typically ownership is usually with the government or public authority, while delivery can often be prioritised. all such public management systems are typically very large and complex. hence they need excellence in public management. one would imagine that the biggest management challenges would lie in the management of these large complex systems which, in principle, should attract the brightest managers. the irony, however, is that there is little generation of expertise for such management functioning and there are few prestigious schools of management that consciously impart training for managing these systems. all these systems need complex financial management of huge budgets ; all of them involve sensitive customer delivery ; and all involve complex logistics. in other words, all such systems have all the elements that should attract the brightest people who like to deal with challenges. it is ironic that there is a proliferation of management schools imparting complex training for small challenges, but none for these complex tasks. what do we need to do? we need to make public service prestigious again : not for the exercise of power and authority, but for tackling challenges for efficient public service delivery. most public service delivery operations, including those run by the civil service, need the injection of outside expertise at different levels. each of our public authorities discourages lateral entry and therefore tends to become inward looking and suspicious of new ideas. lateral entry of outside experts would do much to inject new energy and even public entrepreneurships. a theme running across the different sectors that have been discussed is the exploration and development of new forms of public private partnerships. it must be understood that these are not easy to foster. they usually involve the tension between of two different organising principles : one non - profit and the other profit seeking. the challenge is to design appropriate incentive systems so that the ultimate objective gets aligned. different sectors will need different forms of partnerships. in education, for example, the partners could well be non - profit non - governmental organizations. in ports and airports, the partners could clearly be profit seeking private companies. overall there has to be a search for innovative forms of public service delivery. this would also involve realignment of compensation levels. if individuals of high levels of competence are sought to do the most complex tasks they will need to be compensated adequately. we thus need a nationally generated focused programme to improve public administration and management at all levels