Inter-Professional dialogue on participatory research and participatory development, April 19-25, 1995

Abstract

This report is about a six-day residential dialogue held at PRIA, New Delhi, from April 19 to 25, 1995, bringing together twenty-one social work teachers from sixteen institutions across India. It was organised jointly by PRIA and the Association of Schools of Social Work in India, and the programme traced development thinking in India from colonial resource extraction through the green revolution to the emergence of civil society as a third actor alongside state and market. Sessions moved between conceptual grounding and field testimony, with contributions on urban slum work, panchayati raj, tribal displacement, unorganised labour, women's migration and sustainable development sitting alongside sharper debate on whether social work had earned a distinct professional identity or remained tied to a semi-professional, service-delivery role. Group work threaded through each day, pushing participants toward naming obstacles to participation and imagining how participatory research might enter curricula rather than stay confined to fieldwork electives. The closing sessions turned toward future collaboration between PRIA and the schools of social work.