4. People’s participation in technology development

Transcript

Hi friends, in the previous lectures we studied about the technological aspects. All through we are concentrating and studied about the technological aspects. But now the question comes. Without the people or without the involvement of the farmers, can we develop a technology. The answer is no. We have to have participation of the people or the stakeholders that is the farmers. So in this lecture let us study, what are the roles of the people’s participation, and also importance of people’s participation in technology development.

People’s Participation

Coming to the people’s participation. Participation is a mechanism where the people express themselves, act with mutual responsibility, and to promote a set of mutual interests. So as I said participation is a mechanism where the people participate and express themselves. What we need, what we don’t want; and with a mutual responsibility, and to promote a set of mutual interests. So it’s a mechanism where the people participate with a mutual interest and responsibility. When the people participate. It includes the

• Information generation
• Analysis of the information generated
• And the planning
• Then implementation of the actions planned
• And management of the activities on an on-going process.

When the people are being involved in the participation. So it involves several processes. One is the first and foremost the information generation. Whatever the information we want, that has to be generated with the participation of the people. And they will generate the information, and after the generation of the information; this information has to be analyzed with a proper methods, in a way we wanted. The generated information is subjected to analysis. Then the planning is made. Once the analysis results are obtained the planning will be made. After that, implementation of the action plans.

So whatever the action plans are prepared, these action plans will be implemented. And also lastly the activities, which are being planned, they will be managed as per the planning process. So these are the five steps, where the participation of the people is very important. That is information of the generation, analysis of the generation, then planning, then action plan, then following the planning process or the implementation process.

Participatory Rural Appraisal

To do this we would like to have. There are some extension methods, which have to be adopted for the effective participation of the people. That is in this ‘Participatory Rural Appraisal’- the PRA. These are the techniques. These are useful ways of initiating the participation. So to initiate the process of participation by the people, there are extension methods, there are extension techniques; which can be adopted in an efficient way. So these are participatory rural appraisals. So these are the techniques which are useful in initiating the process of participation. So these techniques are comprised of semi structured tools that can be used to learn relatively quickly with the rural people about their situation, about their problems and opportunities.

There are different types of PRA techniques, which can adopt semi-structured tools. They have semistructured tools which can be used to learn relatively quickly by the rural people about their situations, about their problems, and about their difficulties. By use of the PRA techniques, it is very easy to make the participation of the people easily, quickly and it is also helpful in learning their problems, their difficulties and also situations. So PRA techniques that can initiate the process of participation in dryland program, especially in case of dryland programs are.

• Timeline. In this a very old fellow in the village will be contacted and he will be enquired through the questionnaire about the situation, about the problem, about the difficulties, they have in their village, by virtue of his experience. So this is a timeline, wherein a village, a villager will be contacted, which he will be having a vast experience and based on his output, the planning will be done.
• Then coming to the mapping. Mapping is to generate all kinds of information. In that the villagers will be called and they will be asked to map or locate, where are the resources located in your village. For example temple. Where the temple is there in your village. What are the wells, what are the structures; water structures. Water structures are being located, they will be asked to locate. So this is to get the generate the information.
• Then charts and diagrams. This is to depict the resources and relationships. Whatever the information obtained, they have been depicted through charts and diagrams.
• Then lastly transects. Cross county walk with the farmers. Whatever the resource personnel are there. They will cross county walk. They will walk around the village with the villagers to have the first hand information.

So these are the four PRA techniques that are being used for the effective participation of the people.

Care in the Use of PRA Tools :-

What should be the care should be taken in case of PRA tools. While using participatory rural appraisal techniques, one has to keep certain points in mind, while their implementation. What are those?

• The user must clearly distinguish between facts and opinions. The user, farmer or the villager. When he is contacted, he should be able to distinguish between the facts and figures clearly.
• Then PRA outputs- user’s creativity and the integrity. The whatever the outputs we got from the participatory rural appraisal techniques. They should come from the creativity of the villager. They should come from the integrity of the villager. The creativity and the integrity should be with the villager, while giving the output.
• Next, select the informants with care. This is very important to gain the information, to generate the information. So we will be selecting a villager who is very informative. So we have to select the informative with very care and caution.
• Then views expressed by a few cannot be generalized. Whatever the opinions expressed by villagers cannot be generalized, yes some people said something. That something cannot be generalized. So what we have to do.
• Cross verification of data is a necessary part. Whatever the information generated. That cannot be taken as granted. That has to be cross verified. Cross verification is an important step in the PRA.
• Then documentation of the data. After the cross verification of the data, whatever the data is available. It has to be documented in a proper way.
• Then finally PRA results in expectations, but managed with explanations. This is so happens when you go to a village, and ask the villagers to generate the information, by way of adopting different PRA techniques. The farmers will be in some expected ways. So that has to be managed with some sort of explanations.

So these are the care that has to be used in PRA tools.

Participatory Technology Development (PTD)

Then after that while the development of the technology, what way we have to use the people. Are the farmer, people. That is participatory technology development. So it is a process that combines the knowledge and research capacities of local communities with that of research and development organizations in an interactive mode. While the PTD is being implemented. So it’s a process, wherein the knowledge and research components of the farmer will also be taken into consideration. So in an interactive mode. So whatever the research, whatever the facts, whatever the knowledge the farmer is having. That is also taken into consideration in an interactive way.

So purposeful and creative interaction between the local communities and outside facilitators. So participatory technology development is nothing but purposeful and creative interaction with the people, with the local communities and outside facilitators to generate the knowledge which is available with the farmers.

PTD Involves :- So what it involves. The participatory technology development, it involves

• Gaining joint understanding of the main characteristics and changes of a particular eco-system. So joint understanding between the farmers, villagers and the outside facilitators
• It involves identifying and defining the priorities and problems of individual farmers. So this participatory technology development, it identifies the problems on a priority basis, the solution for which problem has to be found out first. So in this way it finds out the priorities involved in the problems.
• Next experimenting locally with a variety of options derived both by the farmers and from the scientists. So whatever the problems accrued, whatever the problems understood. The solutions in form of experiments, they will be conducted locally with the farmers to get a solution.
• Finally enhancing the farmer’s experimental capacity. The participatory technology development it involves enhancing the farmer’s research capacity. Because the farmer will be involved with the crop production always. He will be having some sort of research knowledge. So PTD involves the experiencing. It involves enhancing the farmer’s knowledge capacities.

So in a way the participation of the people is very important. The people’s participation in correctly identifying and developing the technologies will help sustain the high output from the drylands. Besides imbibing an impression, that they are the stakeholders of the program. This is very important. The people’s participation is an important technique, wherein by identifying and development of the technologies will help to sustain high inputs from the dryland production. And also a sort of imbibing an impression among the stakeholders, that is, they are the stakeholders of the natural resources. It is also imbibed.

In this way the people’s participation in identifying the problems as per the situation, in identifying the difficulties as per their priorities is important. So also participatory technology development. While developing a technology, involvement of the people is also important.

With this conclusion I am concluding this lecture.

Thank You.