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Ardhanaripura
Village - which is located in the Amegundi Watershed, was chosen as the
focal village for the purposes of this workshop. Accordingly, the men
and women of Ardhanaripura were involved in all the field exercises of
the workshop.
WORKSHOP DETAILS
After introductions and clarifications on the participants
expectations from this training, PRA
concepts and methods were defined and explained. They can be summarised
as follows:
Definition:
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) refers to a systematic,
semi-structured approach and methods of assessing and understanding
particular or all village situations with the participation of the
people and through the eyes of the people.
PRA gives us a clue to the way people think.
Major PRA Segments:
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TIME LINE :
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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 history we wish to
reconstruct. Such a calendar can form the basis
of helping us trace trends through history and study the
reconstructed calendar from the memories
of the people; the best informants are the really old people of the
village. Giving dates to events can pose some problems but can be
overcome by asking questions such as "How old do you think you
were when this happened?", or "Do you remember if the
Collector was British or Indian at that time?", and so on.
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SEASONAL
CALENDAR
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: 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:
seasonality of disease outbreaks, periods of maximum and minimum
fuel availability, commodity price fluctuations, patterns in
migration and numerous other such things.
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PARTICIPATORY
MAPPING AND MODELLING
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: is
a technique that serves two purposes:
a. it helps us develop a sense of observation
that
is more keen and more accurate. In making a map or a model we look
at things that we may otherwise have overlooked. Maps be made of
villages, kitchen gardens, market places, drinking water systems,
location of various resources in and around the village, etc. etc.
b. it helps us in understanding how people and resources are
organised. E.g. 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 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. |
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TRANSECTS
ANALYSIS :
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takes us
for a walk through the country side – 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
direction 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 intervention is made. Transects can
also be historical, in the sense that one can trace what the land
looked like 50 years ago as compared to now and so on.
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LIVELIHOOD
ANALYSIS :
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is an exercise
that can be done with individual families to get a micro level
understanding of how people live and make ends meet. It involves
interacting with a family on a variety of issues and subjects to
get a comprehensive picture of that particular family’s
lifestyle and factors affecting it.
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WEALTH
RANKING :
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is
a technique to find out how people from the village itself would
rank the different families as rich, middle and poor, and what
criteria they would use to define rich and poor. The procedure
involves making a list of all families to be ranked in the village
on separate slips of paper so that there are as many slips as
there are families, choosing a knowledgeable informant and
explaining that the families have to be informant and explaining
that the families have to be ranked as rich, medium and poor and
handing the informant slips of paper to be put into separate
piles depending on which particular category the family belongs
(in the informant’s opinion). Once the piles are made they may
be reviewed again for revision. Sometimes, an informant might feel
the need to make more than three piles. After part of the exercise
is completed the informant should be asked what factors
he/she considered in rating the families. The exercise can be
repeated with one or two more informants for cross verification.
Wealth-ranking not only helps us identify the rich and poor
families of the village but also gives us an insight into what
constitutes wealth and what constitutes poverty as far as the
people are concerned.
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Once the concepts had been explained, most of the remaining time was
spent in the field with the farmers. Participants were divided into
groups to interact with groups of villagers and check out the practical
applications of the concepts learnt.
Results of the various exercises were as follows :
EXAMPLE 1 :
Time Line of Ardhanaripura
An old man of the village was interviewed and he referred back to his
own age to recollect the history of the village :
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Approx.
Year
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Approx.
age of
the old
man at
that time
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Event
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1930
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15
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They
were bonded labourers; village never existed.
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1935
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20
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Government of Tamilnadu enquired about feasibility of school and shifted police station in order to
construct the school building.
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1940
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25
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Thick
forest, plenty of fodder, high cattle population, more wild
animals, more milk availability and
good social life.
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1947
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32
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Indian
Independence through the effort of Gandhiji
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1950
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35
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Land
was assigned by Government of Tamilnadu. About 660.8
acres for 100 families covering 4
villages. Due to famine in the area people migrated to this area from
the other areas.
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1955
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40
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Ardhanaripura
village came to existence.
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1965
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50
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School
and houses were built (21). Out-break of disease was in the
area. People evacuated the place.
After some period they came back and settled.
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1988
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73
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200
acres of forest land was burnt.
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1989
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74
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Population
increased, investment on non-essentials increased.
Personal conflicts were common,
depletion of vegetation, low cattle population, non-availability of milk
for consumption. No wild animals, low productivity and income.
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1990
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75
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Population
is 218 (Adults - 90 and Children - 128) 41 Houses.
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EXAMPLE 2 :
Wealth Ranking of families in Ardhanaripura
The procedure for wealth ranking as outlined at the beginning of this
report was not followed in this instance. Instead, four farmers were
questioned as to how the village could be divided into rich, medium and
poor. This is not a good way of getting information, and it is recommended that the correct procedure
be followed whenever wealth ranking is being attempted.
Five families were classified as relatively better off. The criteria
used for this were :
- 3 to 5 acres of good lands.
- Mulberry cultivation
- 10 - 15 goats
- 1 pair of bullocks.
Five families were classified to be of medium level. The criteria
used were :
- 2- 5 acres of land of medium to good soil.
- 5 - 6 goats
- a pair of bullocks
- No mulberry cultivation.
The remaining 32 families were classified as poor. Criteria used were
:
- Cultivation on encroached lands
- 1 to 2 goats
- No bullocks
- No mulberry.
Note : Classification criteria
are not extensive enough. When the classifications
are made using names of the families in the village many more criteria
come into play. For eg. when the same exercise was done on another
occasion in another place, some of the classification criteria were as
follows :
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Better Off :
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Own house,
well built. Employ labour, no need to borrow money, are in a good
position to lend money to others, they own good quality land and
livestock.
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Medium :
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Own land,
but not large holdings, own house, have the confidence and
capacity to borrow money and rep[ay it, considered creditworthy by
others, employ labour.
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Poor :
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Either
landless or having marginal lands, forced to borrow but poor
credit worthiness; find it difficult to repay loans or create assets; forced to sell assets
under crisis, forced to mortgage labour.
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In this case the exercise was probably more productive as well as
accurate because they were forced to think of the actual families they
were being called upon to classify, and the position of these families.
EXAMPLE 3 :
Participatory Analysis of livestock and fodder management systems
Four men and two women were interviewed on a number of aspects such
as types of fodder locally available, benefits of the various types of
fodder, seasonal use of fodder and feed, etc.
The group sat under a tree, and after introducing themselves to each
other, the purpose of the exercise was made clear to all. The group used
four stones of the same size to represent quantity, each stone being
given a value of 25%. The information that was collected was also
finally written up on charts in a way that the village people could
understand, i.e. using diagrams instead of words, and using the local
calendar of seasons and rains instead of the January to December period.
Some of the inputs were as follows :
A) Historical transect showing forest, land, water and livestock
position in the area:
Though the above information as well as the information in the charts
that follow cannot be considered as absolutely accurate, there is no
doubt that they provide planners with many good leads that can be
followed up in greater detail when required, depending on the type of
development programme being planned.
Example : Forest lands have deteriorated but agricultural
lands have actually increased due to encroachment, etc. Similarly,
agricultural yields have gone up due to the use of high yielding
varieties of seeds and chemical fertilisers. Yet, the opposite has been
depicted in the charts. What accounts for the people perceiving things
this way? These and other such questions can be explored.
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