The Department of Sociology had organized a workshop on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) on February 9 and 10, 2017. Given below is the report on the same.
February 9th, 2017
The first day of the workshop was a theory class on Participatory
Rural Appraisal by Mr. Murugan. As a typical data collection process would be
very time consuming, with the PRA, we can rapidly collect data to get a
comprehensive understanding of the complexity of rural societies. Participatory
Rural Appraisal is a semi structural tool to assess the status, problems, needs
and aspirations of people residing in the area. The objectives of conducting
PRA are:
a. To
learn and familiarise with the current situation
b. To
arrive at an agreed set of possibilities for further development
c. Leads
to mutual support in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation
PRA is most effective in an area of not more than 150
households and has an accuracy rate of 80%. The idea is to gather information
directly from the villagers. Identify key informants (typically they are
individuals who have been living there for a long period of time) and they will
give all the details regarding demography, topographical features, wealth
accumulated etc. Various tools are employed under this – social mapping, wealth
ranking, transect walk, resource mapping, seasonality analysis, time line &
trend analysis, Venn diagram, matrix scoring and skill mapping. Once we
understood the processes of each tool we were divided into 4 teams – social
mapping, wealth ranking, seasonality analysis and documentation. Each team sat
together and came up with their game plans. We prepared for the field visit and
presented our interview schedules to Murugan Sir and Maya ma’am.
February 10th, 2017
The 3 hour journey to Yalachammanahally was spent
watching ‘Force 2’. As soon as we reached, Murugan sir directed us to take a
walk around the village. After our recon and a cup of tea, the teams got to
work immediately. Each team had 3 student translators and 3 members of the
documentation team.
SOCIAL MAPPING
Language was a barrier; the translators did most of the
work due to which others felt sidelined. Mr. Murali and Ms. Sarojamma were the
two key informants for social mapping. It was a time consuming process as only
one was drawing the map but on the other hand because only Mr. Murali was
drawing there was less confusion. Instructions were given by Murugan Sir and
Maya Ma’am which led to better productivity. Keeping aside language and the
initial hiccups the team members worked hard to draw the social map. Mr. Murali
was interviewed by the group to get the demographical details of each of the 47
households, like - the number of family members, facilities and education.
The team found all but 3 nuclear families. Though they
wanted a better future for their children only primary education was free. The
rich families sent their children to English medium schools in nearby
towns. Though child marriage is not
practiced anymore, some girls got married at that age of 16 (average).
WEALTH RANKING
After the social mapping team got the list of
households, the wealth ranking process began. Students enlisted the help of 7
villagers to be the teams’ key informants in this exercise. Three indicators
were used - gold ring, watch and a pen – to represent three economic classes.
The informants discussed amongst themselves and placed each household in a
category. Then they were asked to share the reasons on the basis which they
divided.
In total there were 7 rich households, these were
mostly government employees or had their own business (poultry farm). They
owned more or less 3 acres of land, tractors, and cars and lived in stone
roofed houses. They also had money for rotation and savings in bank.
The 17 middle class households lived in AC sheet roofs
and owned less than 2 acres of land. They had very little assets and earned
their livelihood as daily wage labourers.
The remaining 20 households worked as seasonal
labourers. Their houses were not in good conditions and they borrowed money to
meet their needs.
According to the informants, there were no joint
families in the village and already 3 families have migrated out in search of
jobs but none have returned.
SEASONALITY ANALYSIS
There were 9 informants for seasonality analysis’ group
discussion – Geeta, Pilamma, Shrilakshmi, Ratnamma, Geeta, Nagamma, Ratnamma
and Yeuklashamma. All 9 informants were female and daily wage labourers. The
student translators served as the liaison between the informants and the team.
The questions revolved around the religious, ceremonial and agricultural
activities. All informants were forthcoming and were eager to answer all
questions.
The student team drew a table on the floor to analyse
the festival, crops and marriage systems in the village. The village comprises
of only Hindu community. The main agricultural crop is ragi, which is
cultivated in June - July. Other crops like corn, mustard, peas, cauliflower,
and potato are grown throughout the year. Since the past 10 years, people have
stopped practicing organic farming. Ugadi, Varmalakshmi and Vijaylakshmi are
the main festivals celebrated. Marriages take place in the month of April, May
and June.
No labourer from outside comes to work on the fields
even for daily wages. The minimum wage rate as implemented by the government is
not applicable here. The village sangha is the primary access to finance that
the villagers have, charging less than 2% p.a. 2 people from the sangha serve
as witness for lending money.
REFLECTIONS
REFLECTIONS
The workshop was a great exposure as most of us were
doing a field exercise for the first time. Earlier we had a theoretical clarity
but this field exposure gave us a clear understanding to our roles as
researchers.
First of all, these tools were tried in a controlled
and familiar environment. The village is adopted by the Centre for Social
Action and is used to having the Christ University students visiting them.
Murugan sir had informed them of our arrival and had arranged for informants.
He was also present for each of the exercises, thus the role of us, as
researchers, to build the rapport was minimal.
Some of the information gathered by the teams found was
contradicting. For instance, team social mapping found 3 joint family
households while team wealth ranking were informed that there are only nuclear
families in this village. The social mapping team were told that girls are
mostly married off by 16, but the informants of seasonality analysis gave the
example of how their daughters are getting married at 25 (after they have a
job). With such variations, a lot of students questioned the reliability of the
source. Murugan sir had told us that PRA has an accuracy rate of 80%, such
variations are bound to happen and this proves the need for researchers to
triangulate the data collected. Interestingly, the English words the informants
spoke were – ‘research’ ‘joint family’ ‘nuclear family’ etc. This shows that
they have had interactions like this with many such groups.
