WORKSHOP ON PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL APPROACH AND METHODS

Dr.Chambers started the session by posing two questions that were taken up for discussion in small groups:

The responses that came are as summarised in the box below:

The session that followed was a brief theoretical exposition to the Participatory Rural Appraisal approach.

Among other things, PRA asks two questions: (a) Can we try to see things the way other people see them? and (b) Can we recognise that other people may be seeing things differently from us, and accept that this does not make them wrong?

Another principle of PRA is the principle of Triangulation:
                                                   that is asking for and verifying information in more than one way.

Normally, decisions regarding survey methods are taken on the basis of three main factors:

PRA permits one to wander around between the three parameters before choosing to focus in greater detail on any particular area.

The next session included a couple of exercises to help participants discriminate between ‘FACT’, ‘HEARSAY’, and ‘OPINION’. To learn to be discerning is especially important in the PRA context because the data that is generated is ‘live’ rather than ‘cold’ and it is often easy to get carried away by the eloquence of a respondent or the attractiveness of a method without checking whether the information being obtained is ‘correct’ or not.

A further point to bear in mind is to do with the process of eliciting information itself. Without really being aware of it we often find ourselves asking ‘leading’ questions simply because it is easier to do so. Responses to such questions can become rather limited; they may not provoke the farmer to think and respond expansively. For example: "Isn’t your yield higher this year than last year?" is a leading question. A better way of asking could be, "What are your yields like this year when compared to last year?"

The next session went into the four major PRA segments, each of which makes use of a combination of methods and techniques to yield information of a certain kind.

1. TIME LINE: refers to a calendar of historical events from as far back as one can remember, upto the present, in the life of a person, community, village, area, or institution, depending on what we wish to construct. Such a calendar of historical events can form the basis of helping us trace trends through history and study the nature of change. Examples of events could be "the year when we had to leave the village for three months because of an outbreak of plague", "The time when Soliga Soora was the only brave man who went out and killed the tiger that was attacking our cattle", "The year when our road was built and a bus started coming", and so on. Since these events are reconstructed from the memories of the people, the best informants are the really old people of the village. Giving dates to events may have to be done by asking questions such as, ‘How old do you think you were when this happened?’, or ‘Do you remember if the District Collector was British or Indian at that time?’.

Every time an old person dies, a wealth of information is lost.

2. SEASONAL CALENDAR or SEASONALITY DIAGRAMMING: refers to the calendar of the people; it helps us to understand time as the local people understand it. Drawing up such a calendar helps in locating annual occurrences and events, linking up such events to their seasonality, planning programmes on the basis of patterns that emerge and relating to people by means of a jargon that they find easier to understand. Examples of patterns could be: their calendar of agricultural operations, busiest and slackest months in the year, periods of maximum stress, price fluctuations, seasonality of disease outbreaks, periods of maximum and minimum fuel availability, patterns of migration, and numerous other such things. If a match is being attempted between the village calendar (which may be based on seasons, rains, or festivals) and ours (i.e. Jan. - Dec.) it is best that we use an 18-month period of our calendar over which the village calendar can be transposed.

3. PARTICIPATORY MAPPING AND MODELLING: This is actually a technique that serves two purposes -

a) It helps us to develop a sense of observation that is more keen and more accurate. Eg. in one of the villages (Kistagiri) visited by Dr.Chambers the feeling was that nobody was interested in keeping kitchen gardens. Mapping of a ‘desolate’ kitchen garden proved, however, that there were plenty of things growing.

b) It helps us in understanding how people and resources are organised. Eg. Social Mapping of a village provides a picture of the way houses, water taps, etc., are organised and can help us see class and caste patterns. Similarly, Natural Resource Mapping can give us details of land, water, trees, and other such resources, their locations in relation to the village, and from there on to an indication of how and by whom they are used.

4. TRANSECTS ANALYSIS: takes us for a walk through the countryside usually from a high point to a low point but it does not always have to be so - it can also be a cross country walk - to give us an idea of the changing zones within the countryside, and the nature, causes, and directions of such changes. It gives us an idea of what the land is presently supporting, and what it has the potential to support if some interventions are made.

With the above exposition, classroom sessions for the day concluded. Participants divided into 8 groups and spent the rest of the evening in Chikkahalli where 4 groups sat with farmers to do a Time Line exercise, and the other 4 groups the Seasonal Calendar exercise. In the late evening, each group made a presentation in the village itself with the informants also attending and participating. The details of group presentations have not been incorporated into this report.

In the forenoon, the participants once again divided into 8 groups and went into Chikkahalli. 4 groups had the task of making a social map of Chikkahalli, and the other 4 groups a resource map. Once again, on completion of the exercise the presentations were held in the village so that farmers could also join in. Each presentation was in two parts: the maps themselves, and the processes that went into the production of the maps. In 4 out of the 8 groups, the map-explanation part was handled by the farmers themselves.

In the discussions that followed, the following points were made:

If people have to participate in the exercise, they have to first understand what it is all about. It takes a long time to get started but once they understand it, the map emerges rather quickly.

• In order to understand the mapping it appears that people first need to locate themselves in relation to the map (i.e. get oriented in the physical sense). For eg. in this case, once they located the village in relation to the main road and placed the first couple of buildings, the rest was quite easy.

• It is important to find a suitable location for the exercise. The location must facilitate both participation and expression. For e.g., in once case, trying to work indoors kept many people out. Working outdoors and using a patch of land on which to scratch out the map with the help of a stick permitted many to both guide the ‘artist’ and take turns with the stick.

• Available materials can be used creatively to represent objects and make the exercise more visible. E.g. the use of ash or rangoli (colour) powder to draw the map, the use of ragi straw to depict roads, and so on.

• One can experiment with methods until the right note is struck. E.g. one group walked on the map itself to help people decide whether certain buildings came on the right side of the road or the left side.

• Working with groups of farmers rather than an individual helps to correct information on an ongoing basis.

• In timing the exercise, we have to consider the convenience of the people. Eg., if we want women to participate, then the morning is obviously not the right time.

• Having produced a map, it is necessary to subject it to some verification. In this case, one of the groups picked out people at random and asked them if they could find their house on the map. At the end of the exercise a groups of farmers was also asked to look at the map and see if anything had been left out. (In one of the social maps it turned out that a whole group of Harijans who had moved into a new set of houses constructed by the Government had been left out.)

The above points emerged out of the discussion on the subject of participatory mapping in general, though the lessons were drawn out of the experience of the morning. However, to also record a few criticisms regarding the functioning of some of the groups:

- Only one group made a serious attempt to involve women in the mapping process. In this group the map was finally completely the handiwork of a woman. While all groups faced the handicap of going into the village at a time when women are not free, this group persisted in overcoming (successfully) the handicap.

- One group produced a map that was rather attractive; so much so that when a farmer pointed out that a particular street had been left out, the response was "We will report about that street in our presentation but let’s not tamper with the map now!"

- One group placed some emphasis on working with a literate farmer so as to complete the work more quickly. Was this a bias that surfaced? or was it a strategic decision? Because the same group, when working on timelines and seasonal calendars had not sought a literate person out. But the point to be made all the same is that it is not only a literate person who can assist in making a good map.

The session concluded with two observations: (i) the technique of participatory mapping can generate a tremendous amount of information and provide many insights into the lifestyles of rural people. (ii) in doing such exercises it is very important and very useful to be self-critical and questioning.