How Participatory rural appraisal is basic tool for participatory management and how are these tools used in the development of participatory projects?

Answer 1

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is an approach, which aims to incorporate the knowledge and opinions of rural people in the planning and management of development projects and programme's. The participatory methods are used in every activity associated with social mobilization, group organization and planning and management. Various techniques has gained wide spread reorganization in participatory management, research, development and implementation of various projects.

The commonly used service methods are not only costly, but also take long time for data collection and analysis. PRA is an intensive but semi structured learning experience carried out in a community by a multidisciplinary team working with community. It is an alternative to the traditional research method which focuses upon questionnaire based surveys and statistical analysis. Hence PRA is the basic tool for the participatory management.

The key techniques of PRA for development of participatory management are

i) Interview/Discussion: observe everything and anything about the life of the people and about their environment and use this data to confirm the hypothesis you have about the community. Discuss with the local people to gain the indigenous knowledge. Ask question of what, why when, where, who and which type to get detailed and clear information while discussing and interviewing.

ii) Mapping: Making a community map is probably the best approach for you to get started. Have a walk through the community, and draw a map of the area. Let the map include communal facilities, personal and family buildings, assets and liabilities.

One method is for individuals or small groups to each make a separate map, then, as a group exercise later, all the small groups of individuals prepare a large map combining and synthesizing what is included on all the maps. Valuable information over and above that shown on scientifically produced maps can be obtained from maps drawn by local people. These maps show the perspective of the drawer and reveal much about local knowledge of resources, land use and settlement patterns, or household characteristics. Between maps and the models which are described next, you can encourage community members to draw their map on the ground, using sticks to draw lines. Drawing the map on the ground, like drawing a large map on the wall, gives you and the participants a chance to easily make the drawing process a group process.

Map the important institutions like government buildings, schools etc. and also form the pie and venn diagrams which are later useful in giving better picture and information about the community though they may not be the exact facts.

iii) Ranking:

With the above activities we can see many problems and solutions can be done with individuals and groups giving a cross analysis of varying prospects of existing groups in the community. This chart also indicates the efforts already put by the people we can analyse and come up with better solutions.

Matrix scoring and ranking is a useful tool for assessing the relative importance of different activities in people's livelihoods. It can be used to analyse how the time is used for activities like what crops are grown, rainfall occupations of women etc. A matrix is a double entry grid that can be used to analyse two sets of variables. Once the main livelihood activities have been identified, participants should be asked what criteria they think are important when making comparisons between them. When these have been agreed, the activities can be compared and scored, and then ranked in importance.

Activity

Income

Food

Other

Total score

Overall score

1

Crop production

3

5

1

9

1

2

Animal husbandry

1

2

1

4

4

3

Wage labour

5

0

0

5

2

4

Forest products

2

1

3

6

3

The above is a hypothetical example of forest-dependent communities in India, scoring is on the scale of 0 to 5. It should be noted that the total scores for each enterprise will not necessarily correspond with the rankings. Wage labour is ranked more highly than forest products, despite having a slightly lower total score. This is because 'income' is considered more important than 'other subsistence products', and wage labour has a much higher score against this criterion than forest products.

iv) Mobility charts and Mobility Mapping: the mobility of the people should be mapped to know the frequency for marriage attendance, school, job, travel etc. which gives us an idea regarding the people and community.

Example: People going for medical facility out of the village means that its an indication regarding the lack of medical facilities.

PRA makes use of wide range of techniques. The basic ones are the above one. While conducting the PRA the most appropriate and useful set of techniques should be selected. Each time a PRA is done, it should experiment with, invert and adapt methods as necessary.