The Small Scale Irrigation Project in Bangladesh is an example of a project which could not fail, but, due to a variety of institutional shortcomings, almost did. So concludes this evaluation of the project, which was initiated in 1976 to provide hand tube wells (HTW's) to small farmers in Bangladesh. The project was designed to take advantage of a technology already widely accepted in Bangladesh and well-adapted to the country's climate and its high water table. The HTW, or hand pump, is simple to operate and maintain, and makes use of cheap local labor. Most importantly, it is inexpensive, and with credit available, affordable by small farmers. Despite these positive factors, the project was plagued by problems from its beginning, mainly because its initial design failed to adequately address a number of crucial issues: the need to import iron (lack of raw materials delayed implementation for years) for indigenous manufacture of HTW's; the exact design of the pump; production by local foundries; and, especially, the credit and distribution system. To ensure that targeted farmers - those owning 3 acres or less - were reached, a system of certification and documentation was created. The system proved ineffective and its paperwork a hindrance. Worse, institutional inadequacies with the credit system (along with farmer dislike of the system, which required their land as collateral) made farmers owning 3 to 7 acres the primary beneficiaries. Such farmers are at the upper end of the landholding scale in Bangladesh. Most of these problems have now been worked out - although spare parts are hard to obtain and the credit system still inadequate - and some 180,000 HTW's are in use, primarily for irrigating a third, dry season crop which would not have been planted but for the pumps, and which is, in some cases, a cash crop. A market has recently developed for used HTW's, making them available to the poorest farmers, those not well served by the credit system. The HTW's have also been used to increase the supply of potable water, reducing the incidence of dysentery and stomach ailments.