Community Knowledge

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End date: 1989Subject: search.filters.subject.India

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    Participatory Research International networking memo, February 1, 1986
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1986) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
    This networking memo, issued by Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) in February 1986, reports on the participatory research working group at the 1985 ICAE World Assembly of Adult Education in Buenos Aires. The group’s 45 participants, from more than 30 countries, discussed the aims and methods of participatory research and agreed that its principles stay common across very different settings. They saw the following years as a period of consolidation, with plans for documenting experience, publishing, building resource centres and exchanging ideas between regions. The memo then gives updates from the networks in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and North America, and closes with new publications and materials on participatory research.
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    Participatory training and self development
    (0000) Acharya, Binoy; Verma, Shalini
    How should training be undertaken to encourage critical thinking and instill confidence in people? In this article, Binoy Acharya and Shalini Verma discuss the growing emphasis on training within the development sector while questioning approaches that reduce training to the mere transfer of information or techniques. They argue that many people, especially the poor and marginalised, experience the systematic devaluation of their own knowledge and capacities which weakens self confidence and participation. For this reason, simply providing more skills cannot by itself lead to empowerment, though external knowledge may still be useful. The focus of training, they argue, must be to foster critical thinking so that people can analyse their own realities, articulate their experiences, and identify what they need to learn further. Participatory training is highlighted as a process that breaks the culture of silence, restores faith in people’s own knowledge, and builds confidence for collective action. Social development, the authors emphasise, begins with the development of the self.
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    Knowledge and social change: An inquiry into participatory research in India
    (Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1985-10) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
    This report is about an inquiry into participatory research, evaluation, and training efforts across India, carried out by the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) with seven collaborating organizations from different parts of the country. It grew out of a shared unease among researchers and trainers about the distance conventional social science placed between the expert and the people that research was meant to serve. The study set out to document ongoing experiments in the field and to draw out what these scattered efforts had in common. The cases move from training sessions with rural and urban women to inquiries carried out jointly by professionals, activists, and forest dwellers, each showing people affected by a problem taking part in investigating it themselves. The report works through how such processes build confidence and collective awareness among participants and how the person facilitating a group must stay close enough to its concerns to be useful while keeping enough distance to see clearly. The seven cases differ widely in setting and scale, yet common threads run through them around mobilization, skill-building, and the sharing of authority over knowledge, questions that the study returns to through each case.
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    Participatory research international networking memo, March 15, 1985
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1985-03-15) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
    The March 1985 issue of the Participatory Research International Networking Memo, circulated by PRIA, reflects on the Bhopal gas tragedy and PRIA's efforts to document it for educational purposes through its collaboration with the Highlander Center. . A regional update reports on participatory research developments across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. These include the formation of the Senegalese Association of Participatory Research, PRIA's own work on a participatory research and evaluation study, a workshop on the Koel-Karo dam project in India, and ongoing Bhopal-related investigation and mobilization. Other updates cover a databank on participatory research literature in Italy, a planned handbook on self-reliant development, a new Participatory Research Exchange in the UK, the use of participatory research within Quebec's feminist movement, and a proposed workshop on knowledge, education, and power in Canada. The memo closes with a list of new publications, including studies from Taiwan, Bangladesh, and Norway, and two videos, one on community responses to Bhopal and another featuring a conversation with Rajesh Tandon and Ganesh Pandey on the origins of participatory research in Asia
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    Role of NGOs in education for all
    (Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1989-11) Tandon, Rajesh
    This article by Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the different types of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in South Asian context and their potential roles in achieving “Education for All”. It categorizes NGOs into broad types based on their activities. These NGOs operate at different levels like local, regional, national, and international and understanding this diversity is essential for conceptualizing NGO roles in education. The article further examines the implications of these NGOs and notes five roles NGOs play in Education for All. First, service provision involving filling gaps in educational services in remote and poverty-stricken areas. Second, innovation and experimentation in curriculum development, non-formal education structures, participatory training methodologies, and community-based monitoring system. Third, community participation and social accountability, mobilizing communities to examine the value of education and developing mechanisms for making teachers accountable to communities. Fourth, intervening in current delivery systems of the government to revitalize and improve their capacities through training, curriculum design, and capacity building. Fifth, advocacy on questioning the education, monitoring government performance, gaps between policy and practice, and lobbying for equitable educational provision. The article concludes by identifying a few implications of these roles played by the NGOs.
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    Development training of marginal farmers in india
    (1980) Tandon, Rajesh
    This paper by Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the development training of marginal farmers in India as a case study as methods of interventions for development among rural poor communities. The paper begins by arguing for the need of developmental strategies to focus on individual development in micro settings to initiate macro development. It underlines some basic but necessary principles of training that leads to creation of awareness, knowledge, skills, as well as catalysing actions. The paper then presents a detailed case study of a three day residential training programme conducted with two peer groups from Pati and Pura villages in collaboration with Seva Mandir, an agency in Udaipur. It explains how dialogue, group sessions, and role plays were used to develop awareness of village problems, understanding of power dynamics, and confidence of villagers in organizing. The paper then concludes with listing out some important points to be considered by the trainers as part of the training programs.
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    Participatory research and participatory social action
    (1980-04-13) Tandon, Rajesh
    Research and action are often treated as separate activities, yet they constantly shape and reinforce one another. This paper examines the ways in which traditional social research has been tied to top-down models of social action, both marked by external control, imported methods, and limited participation. Against this backdrop, it highlights the emergence of participatory social action as a new paradigm that redistributes power, values local knowledge, and defines success through collective learning and empowerment rather than abstract indicators. The paper argues that participatory research must find its place within this shift, developing practices that equalise power, draw on community resources, and produce outcomes that matter to the people most directly involved.
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    Participatory research meeting in India
    (1979-02) Tandon, Rajesh
    This report documents a Participatory Research (PR) meeting held in February 1979. It was attended by 35 activists, field workers, researchers, and practitioners from across India. It describes case studies shared at the meeting, including West Bengal's Operation Barga sharecropper registration drive, a tribal-led irrigation scheme in Rajasthan, and the mobilization of landless labourers and tribal women through Maharashtra's Shramik Sangathana. The report then turns to debates that emerged on PR's relationship to social action, the overlapping roles of researcher and activist, the risk of fostering dependency, and possible entry points for PR work, along with a comparison of PR and classical research across five guiding principles. It closes by reflecting on the empathy and self-awareness needed in a participatory researcher.