Participatory Action Research
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Item Participatory research as a methodology of development(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 0000) Tandon, RajeshThis paper questions how development research has usually been done. It points out that classical research keeps a firm line between the researcher and the people being studied, treats the researcher's own values as something to be kept out of the picture, and leaves control of the whole process in the researcher's hands alone. Participatory research is put forward as a way of working that sets these assumptions aside. Here the problem to be studied comes from the community itself, the people affected take an active part in the inquiry, and the researcher works alongside them rather than above them. Three examples from India carry the idea forward. In West Bengal, sharecroppers were registered through village camps under what became known as Operation Barga. In southern Rajasthan, twelve tribal families built a shared irrigation system by reviving an old local practice of water-sharing. In Maharashtra, an organisation called Shramik Sanghatana brought together landless labourers and tribal women around wages, land rights and the effects of alcoholism on their households. Through these cases, the paper highlights some of the more challenging issues that participatory research raises, such as its closeness to political action, the difficulty of applying it in unorganized communities, and the need for a researcher's personal perspective before people are willing to trust the process.Item Society for participatory research in Asia(1999) Tandon, RajeshThis press release is about the Bhopal Sammelan, a three-day gathering held in November 1999 that brought together about 1400 people from over 400 organisations and elected panchayat leaders across sixteen states. Organised by the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) with its partners, and hosted by Samarthan in Bhopal, the event drew social activists, development workers, trade unionists, tribal and women leaders, students and youth to build solidarity through cross-state exchange. Discussions were held around five themes: citizenship, empowerment, new leadership, accountable local self-governance and participatory social development. The Sammelan planned actions to hold public officials accountable, educate citizens on their rights, recognise emerging leadership among women, dalits and adivasis, and push for local control over land, forests and water. The event also marked the release of the India findings from the global study Citizens and Governance, conducted by PRIA and partners across ten states.Item Participatory research Project: A note on the activities of the Asian region(0000) Tandon, RajeshItem Refreshing consumer welfare in India: Opportunities for participatory democracy(0000) Tandon, RajeshItem From action research to knowledge democracy Cartagena 1977-2017(Colombian Journal of Sociology (RCS), 2018) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshWhat can we learn from the histories of participatory research? In this article, Dr. Budd Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon reflect on the historical and political trajectories that shaped participatory action research in its current form. In conversation with pioneers such as Orlando Fals Borda, they situate participatory research within wider struggles for adult education, liberation and democratic knowledge production. Drawing from personal reflections and histories of adult education institutions, Hall and Tandon write about their own journeys into participatory research and the relationships that sustained these practices across continents. The article highlights the need for a non-fragmented methodology of action research, rooted in political praxis and committed to societal transformation. Through the work of Borda, particularly the landmark 1977 Cartagena conference that brought together over 4000 delegates to deliberate on people’s participation, the authors highlight the importance of challenging unequal relations of power and control. In revisiting these histories, the article affirms participatory action research as an ongoing project of epistemic justice and social transformationItem Beyond partnerships: Embracing complexity to understand and improve research collaboration for global development(2021) Fransman, Jude; Hall, Budd L; Hayman, Rachel; Narayanan, Pradeep; Newman, Kate; Tandon, RajeshWhile there is a burgeoning literature on the benefits of research collaboration for development, it tends to promote the idea of the ‘partnership’ as a bounded site in which interventions to improve collaborative practice can be made. This article draws on complexity theory and systems thinking to argue that such an assumption is problematic, divorcing collaboration from wider systems of research and practice. Instead, a systemic framework for understanding and evaluating collaboration is proposed. This framework is used to reflect on a set of principles for fair and equitable research collaboration that emerged from a programme of strategic research and capacity strengthening conducted by the Rethinking Research Collaborative (RRC) for the United Kingdom (UK)’s primary research funder: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The article concludes that a systemic conceptualisation of collaboration is more responsive than a ‘partnership’ approach, both to the principles of fairness and equity and also to uncertain futures.Item From clarity to anarchy: Participatory research approach (A critique of "The methodology of the participatory research approach")(1979) Tandon, RajeshIn this paper, Rajesh Tandon responds to a critique of a paper on the methodology of the participatory research approach, presented at the African Regional Workshop on Participatory Research in Tanzania in 1979. A central fallacy runs through the original argument that the wide range of political activism within PRA produces naive idealism and methodological adhocism. Participatory research is not an invention of the seventies; only its label is new, since people organising the rural poor had long practised its elements without naming them. Two vantage points inform the approach, the activist's and the professional researchers, and reconciling them forms the real challenge. Classical research confines inquiry to thinking alone, while PRA treats feeling and acting as equally valid modes of knowing. A genuine risk of subjective, superficial analysis remains, addressed through joint analysis between researcher and people. PRA's apparent anarchism reflects unfamiliarity and variety rather than incoherence.Item The Indian urban elites: An exploratory study(0000) De, Nitish R.; Tandon, RajeshItem Dialogue as inquiry and intervention(1981) Tandon, RajeshItem Participatory research and social transformation(1989-01) Tandon, RajeshThe article presents Dr. Rajesh Tandon's account of the origins and development of participatory research. It traces the approach back to adult educators across Africa, Asia and Latin America, who found that mainstream research methods did not match their belief in people's ability to learn, act and change their own world. The dominant social science methodology, established after the Second World War and based on claims of neutrality and objectivity, is described as a way of controlling ordinary people's lives and minds. Participatory research is presented as an alternative built on people's own involvement and experience rather than distance and detachment. This alternative recognises people's own knowledge, strengthens their ability to analyse their situation, helps them use expert knowledge for their own benefit, brings forward their own perspective, and frees their minds from dependence on trained experts. The article also discusses four long-running questions around the goals, roles, methods and results of participatory research, along with its links to movements around natural resources, labour, women and human rights.