Series 1 : Participatory Learning Methods

PRA-PALM Series

Paper 1

WORKSHOP ON PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL APPROACH AND METHODS

Monday, 8th January 1990:

Dr.Chambers started the session by posing two questions that were taken up
for discussion in small groups:

The responses that came are as summarised in the box below:

Important discussion points

Are people the focus of study, or are the people the informants, or is it
both?

The session that followed was a brief theoretical exposition to the
Participatory Rural Appraisal approach.

Among other things, PRA asks two questions: (a) Can we try to see things the
way other people see them? and (b) Can we recognise that other people may be
seeing things differently from us, and accept that this does not make them
wrong?

Another principle of PRA is the principle of Triangulation:

that is asking for and verifying
information in more than one way.

Normally, decisions regarding survey
methods are taken on the basis of three main factors:

PRA permits one to wander
around between the three parameters before choosing to focus in greater
detail on any particular area.

The next session included
a couple of exercises to help participants discriminate between ‘FACT’,
‘HEARSAY’, and ‘OPINION’. To learn to be discerning is
especially important in the PRA context because the data that is
generated is ‘live’ rather than ‘cold’ and it is often easy to
get carried away by the eloquence of a respondent or the attractiveness
of a method without checking whether the information being obtained is
‘correct’ or not.

A further point to bear
in mind is to do with the process of eliciting information itself. Without really being aware of it we often
find ourselves asking ‘leading’ questions simply because it is
easier to do so. Responses to such questions can become rather limited;
they may not provoke the farmer to think and respond expansively. For
example: “Isn’t your yield higher this year than last year?”
is a leading question. A better way of asking could be, “What are
your yields like this year when compared to last year?”

The next session went into the
four major PRA segments, each of which makes use of a combination of
methods and techniques to yield information of a certain kind.

1. TIME LINE: refers to
a calendar of historical events from as far back as one can remember,
upto the present, in the life of a person, community, village, area, or
institution, depending on what we wish to construct. Such a calendar of
historical events can form the basis of helping us trace trends through
history and study the nature of change. Examples of events could be
“the year when we had to leave the village for three months because
of an outbreak of plague”, “The time when Soliga Soora
was the only brave man who went out and killed the tiger that was
attacking our cattle”, “The year when our road was built and a
bus started coming”, and so on. Since these events are
reconstructed from the memories of the people, the best informants are
the really old people of the village. Giving dates to events may have to
be done by asking questions such as, ‘How old do you think you were
when this happened?’, or ‘Do you remember if the District Collector
was British or Indian at that time?’.

Every time an old person
dies, a wealth of information is lost.

2. SEASONAL CALENDAR or
SEASONALITY DIAGRAMMING: refers to the calendar of the people; it
helps us to understand time as the local people understand it. Drawing
up such a calendar helps in locating annual occurrences and events,
linking up such events to their seasonality, planning programmes on the
basis of patterns that emerge and relating to people by means of a
jargon that they find easier to understand. Examples of patterns could
be: their calendar of agricultural operations, busiest and slackest
months in the year, periods of maximum stress, price fluctuations,
seasonality of disease outbreaks, periods of maximum and minimum fuel
availability, patterns of migration, and numerous other such things. If
a match is being attempted between the village calendar (which may be
based on seasons, rains, or festivals) and ours (i.e. Jan. – Dec.) it is
best that we use an 18-month period of our calendar over which the
village calendar can be transposed.

3. PARTICIPATORY MAPPING AND
MODELLING: This is actually a technique that serves two purposes –

a) It helps us to develop a
sense of observation that is more keen and more accurate. Eg. in one of
the villages (Kistagiri) visited by Dr.Chambers the feeling was that
nobody was interested in keeping kitchen gardens. Mapping of a ‘desolate’
kitchen garden proved, however, that there were plenty of things
growing.

b) It helps us in understanding
how people and resources are organised. Eg. Social Mapping of a village
provides a picture of the way houses, water taps, etc., are organised
and can help us see class and caste patterns. Similarly, Natural
Resource Mapping can give us details of land, water, trees, and other
such resources, their locations in relation to the village, and from
there on to an indication of how and by whom they are used.

4. TRANSECTS ANALYSIS:
takes us for a walk through the countryside usually from a high point to
a low point but it does not always have to be so – it can also be a
cross country walk – to give us an idea of the changing zones within the
countryside, and the nature, causes, and directions of such changes. It
gives us an idea of what the land is presently supporting, and what it
has the potential to support if some interventions are made.

With the above exposition,
classroom sessions for the day concluded. Participants divided into 8
groups and spent the rest of the evening in Chikkahalli where 4 groups
sat with farmers to do a Time Line exercise, and the other 4 groups the
Seasonal Calendar exercise. In the late evening, each group made a
presentation in the village itself with the informants also attending
and participating. The details of group presentations have not been
incorporated into this report.

Tuesday, 9th January 1990

In the forenoon, the
participants once again divided into 8 groups and went into Chikkahalli.
4 groups had the task of making a social map of Chikkahalli, and the
other 4 groups a resource map. Once again, on completion of the exercise
the presentations were held in the village so that farmers could also
join in. Each presentation was in two parts: the maps themselves, and
the processes that went into the production of the maps. In 4 out of the
8 groups, the map-explanation part was handled by the farmers
themselves.

In the discussions that
followed, the following points were made:

If
people have to participate in the exercise, they have to first
understand what it is all about. It takes a long time to get
started but once they understand it, the map emerges rather quickly.

• In
  order to understand the mapping it appears that people first need to
  locate themselves in relation to the map (i.e. get oriented in
  the physical sense). For eg. in this case, once they located the village
  in relation to the main road and placed the first couple of buildings,
  the rest was quite easy.

• It
  is important to find a suitable location for the exercise. The location
  must facilitate both participation and expression. For e.g., in
  once case, trying to work indoors kept many people out. Working outdoors
  and using a patch of land on which to scratch out the map with the help of
  a stick permitted many to both guide the ‘artist’ and take turns with
  the stick.

• Available
  materials can be used creatively to represent objects and make the exercise more visible. E.g. the
  use of ash or rangoli (colour) powder to draw the map,
  the use of ragi straw to depict roads, and so on.

• One
  can experiment with methods until the right note is struck. E.g. one
  group walked on the
  map itself to help people decide whether certain buildings came on the right side of the road or the
  left side.

• Working
  with groups of farmers rather than an individual helps to correct information on an ongoing basis.

• In
  timing the exercise, we have to consider the convenience of the people.
  Eg., if we want
  women to participate, then the morning is obviously not the right time.

• Having
  produced a map, it is necessary to subject it to some verification. In
  this case, one of
  the groups picked out people at random and asked them if they could find their house on the map. At
  the end of the exercise a groups of farmers was also
  asked to look at the map and see if anything had been left out. (In one
  of the social maps it turned out that a whole group of Harijans who had
  moved into a new set of
  houses constructed by the Government had been left out.)

The above points emerged out of
the discussion on the subject of participatory mapping in general,
though the lessons were drawn out of the experience of the morning.
However, to also record a
few criticisms regarding the functioning of some of the groups:

– Only one group made a serious
attempt to involve women in the mapping process. In this group the map
was finally completely the handiwork of a woman.
While all groups faced the handicap of going into the village at a time when women are not free, this
group persisted in overcoming (successfully) the handicap.

– One group produced a map that
was rather attractive; so much so that when a farmer pointed out that a
particular street had been left out, the response was “We will
report about that street in our presentation but let’s not tamper with the map now!”

– One group placed some
emphasis on working with a literate farmer so as to complete the work
more quickly. Was this a bias that surfaced? or was it a strategic
decision? Because the same group, when working on timelines and seasonal
calendars had not sought a literate person out. But the point to be made
all the same is that it is not only a literate person who can assist in
making a good map.

The session concluded with two
observations: (i) the technique of participatory mapping can
generate a tremendous amount of information and provide many insights
into the lifestyles of rural people. (ii) in doing such exercises it is
very important and very useful to be self-critical and questioning.

One important aspect not
considered up to now:

-> While PRA helps us see patterns in
‘static’ entities/realities, we have not yet looked at either
relationships or systems of management. Can PRA methods help in this
kind of understanding also?

THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT
STARTS WITH REFLECTION. PRA DEFINITELY HELPS TO START THIS PROCESS OFF
WITH THE PEOPLE WITH WHOM WE ARE WORKING.

In the afternoon, some groups
departed on a Transects exercise as outlined on Page 8, while others
looked at the subjects of women’s time use, and home gardens. The
presentations that followed were not made in the village but back at the
Training Centre.

Some points that emerged were:

• In
  most cases the exercise was represented in the form of area maps rather
  than transect diagrams.

• Groups
  that did not have an experienced leader felt very much handicapped
  and unclear about the whole exercise. Perhaps that was one of the
  reasons why area maps were produced rather than transect diagrams.

• With
  the women’s time use exercise there was the issue of how women
  tell time. In the absence of clocks, what reference points do they make
  use of to tell time? This issue was not addressed.

At the end of the day there was
a brief reflection on the usefulness of the methods learnt. PRA helps us
go beyond data collection and into processes. It is a methodology for
learning rather than information gathering. Perhaps it should be named
something else? Mr.Fernandez suggested that we could rename it.

P A L M

Participatory
Learning Methods

Wednesday, 10th January
1990

A short time in the morning was
spent in discussing the Do’s and Don’ts of interviewing. A long list
developed, the central theme of which was that the relationship between
the Interviewer and Interviewee is absolutely crucial to the outcome of
the interview and care should go into seeing that a positive
relationship is established. One other point was that in the case of
using PRA methods where so much flexibility and room for improvisation
is present, one decision that the interviewer may want to take
beforehand is whether the interview has to be with an individual or a
group.

The nature of groups was also
very briefly touched upon, and distinctions were made between Casual,
Specialist, Structured and Community groups.

Crucial questions in working
with groups:

* Who is not present here who
should have been present?

* Why not?

The next session
went into an explanation of the method of WEALTH RANKING and LIVELIHOOD
ANALYSIS. While doing a livelihood analysis would give us insights
into the way people manage their lives, wealth ranking was a good way of
finding out how people from the village itself would rank their population
as rich, middle and poor, and what criteria they would use to make the
distinctions.

Wealth Ranking
: The Procedure

• Decide upon the community that you
  want to do the ranking for (A size of 50-100 families would be
  ideal; otherwise the village may have to be covered part by part).

• Make a list of all the households in
  the village by name.

• Find a key informant who is
  familiar with all the households in the village. (Data can be corrected, but
  a knowledgeable person is important).

• Choose a place that is quiet and
  undisturbed to work in.

• Spend a little time building up a
  relationship with the informant.

• Explain the exercise to him/her
  without creating any anxiety, and making sure that the
  exercise is properly understood.

• Have ready with you slips of paper on
  which the names of the households have been written. Each household
  must be written on a separate slip of paper so that there are as many
  slips as families in the village.

• Read each name aloud, hand over the
  slip to the informant, and ask him/her to put it into one of the
  economic categories where he/she thinks the family will fit. (If the
  informant wishes to make more than three categories, that is fine, but ask
  why.)

• Do not push for results or subject the
  informant to any kind of embarrassment.

• Note down all final
  responses as well as the informant’s reasons for making them.

• For the purposes of checking out,
  repeat the exercise with another informant in the same way.

Following the
briefing, 8 groups once again left for 2 villages, Marur and Mudianur, to
do the wealth ranking and livelihood analysis exercises.

Presentation of
findings was done in the late evening. Some examples of findings are as
follows:

– In one group, the
villagers’ own criteria for making the distinction between rich,
in-between, and poor were:

– In more than one
group, after the families were divided into 3 categories the informants
felt compelled to further sub-divide them into a total of 6 categories
starting from wealthiest to poorest.

– In one group, for
reasons that are not clear, the informant, after himself establishing the
criteria for classification, placed 6 people under ‘rich’ and one
person under ‘doubtful’ at first count; at second count the numbers
were changed to 3 under ‘rich’ and 14 under ‘doubtful’. This made
the group question the validity of findings obtained in this way.

Comments on
the day’s work:

• All groups showed good teamwork. But
  perhaps more than 4 members in a team would have been too much.
  Between 4 members tasks and responsibilities were evenly shared so that
  some were interviewing, others documenting, and yet others taking note of
  the process.

• Only
  one group had done the wealth ranking using the ‘traditional’ method of talking
  to one informant only in private. Another group manoeuvred to interview an
  individual in seclusion, but later repeated the exercise with a large group
  of 26 people. All other groups did the exercise in public with much
  discussion among the villagers. Dr.Chambers explained that this was the
  first time in his experience that the exercise had been done with a group.

• One of the groups did the exercise
  with a group of women only, which was also the first time that such
  a thing had been attempted.

• It was observed that working with
  individuals was much quicker than working with groups. Could it
  also be considered to yield more accurate results? Doing it in a group
  could mean that social relationships would have a good chance of
  influencing outcomes.

• The value of drawing up the list of
  names in the village versus going into the village with a list
  drawn up previously by someone not familiar with all families was an issue
  that had to be examined. In this case, the lists had already been drawn up
  and farmers faced the problem of identifying several names either because
  they were known as something else in the village or because we were
  pronouncing the names wrongly, or because there were several people with
  the same names who could only be identified by naming their
  fathers/husbands also and this detail had been left out.

• The livelihood analysis demonstrated
  amazing coping mechanisms among the poor.

• It was observed that wealth-ranking
  could very well be used as a springboard for other discussions such
  as finding out the characteristics of poverty according to rural people,
  tracing development trends, etc.

• In the livelihood analysis as well as
  wealth ranking, health issues seemed to have been left out from all
  mention whereas in fact they have been demonstrated to have an important
  effect on the lives of the poor. It would perhaps be worth probing into
  this area.

• The use of diagrams both in eliciting
  information from the people and making the presentations was
  appreciated.

Thursday, 11th
January 1990

This day was
allocated for participants to choose any topic of their choice and make an
investigation into it using PRA methods. However, before leaving for the
field, each group also had to write up the processes they had observed and
experienced while doing the wealth ranking and livelihood analysis. (These
write-ups have not been attached to this report)

For the field
exercise, topics that were chosen were:

1) Livestock
feeding: resources and management practices.

2) Migration.

3) Trees.

4) Assessment of changes in well bring among people.

5) Non-farm activities.

6) Literacy.

Presentations were
scheduled for the following day.

Friday, 12th
January 1990

Morning until
teatime was spent in making presentations of the previous day’s work.

Comments on the
work turned out:

· The topical PRAs had succeeded in
generating plenty of good leads for further investigation. For e.g.
the Literacy group had elicited the information that in 3 out of 7
families IRDP loans had resulted in one child being taken out of school in
order to look after the animals purchased. Was this a fact in all cases?
Was IRDP being merely stated as an excuse?

· Another piece of information was that
by giving youngsters an education the families were actually losers
because they either left the village, or did not contribute any money to
the family, or felt ashamed of the traditional occupations practiced in
their families. How widespread would this be?

· The groups had been very creative in
using methods of eliciting information. To go back to the literacy
group again, their method of selecting families to be interviewed had been
to make a participatory social map of the locality, ask the villagers to
name the families that had the characteristics that they wanted to
investigate into, (e.g. a family with one child going to school and
another not; a family with educated female children, and so on) and mark
their houses on the map.

· Doing a time line with a family to
study changes in well-being had yielded a very powerful case study
which was not only of academic interest but also made an impact on the
team doing the interviewing and renewed their motivation to continue
working in the field of development.

· On occasion it seemed a good strategy
to work backwards from a concrete point in the present. For e.g.
the trees group had started by asking the informant how many trees there
were in his village at present, how many were there five years ago, and
five years before that and so on.

· One group learnt that some interviews
could be very painful and embarrassing both for the Interviewer and
Interviewee. This was particularly so in the case of poor families who did
not want to talk about their poverty. The group looking at changes in well
being found one informant closing up when the questions got personal. It
was best to terminate such interviews.

· The usefulness of Matrix Ranking
(3) 
to
establish priorities was pointed out.

· Diagrammatic representation of
materials was appreciated. However, there were occasional instances
where the diagram chosen was not appropriate for the information to be
presented. For e.g. the group dealing with migration used a single graph
line to depict the pattern of migrating both across the last fifty years
and over the months of any single year.

The results are as
follows:

The discussion
suggested that care should be taken to see that diagrams are not likely to
cause confusion, to mislead, or be misinterpreted.

• Dr.Chambers
  cautioned that triangulation is very important for PRA and so we had to
  be aware that the present exercise was purely exploratory – it could not be
  used as a basis for planning; it could only be used as a basis for further
  investigation into any of the number of leads that had been thrown up.

From Dr.Chambers:
A few additional points before closing:

• Many PRA methods have not yet been
  covered in this workshop. E.g. The value of doing something
  yourself – like ploughing a field or sitting at a potter’s wheel – in
  order to find out more about it, or doing chains of interviews, or using
  local people to do their own research and then reporting back.

• The method of contrast comparisons was
  briefly explained, where one group analyses the behaviour of
  another group that is different to them. E.g. a group of farmers not using
  improved ragi seeds may be asked why they think another group of farmers
  is using them.

• A slide was used to point out how
  aerial photographs could be an extremely useful basis for
  discussions. A top-view could show patterns and impacts in a way that
  interviews would not be able to demonstrate. However, aerial photographs
  as a means of information gathering was not yet in popular use in India,
  though it was beginning to be used extensively in several other developing
  countries.

• There are many more diagrams whose
  uses this workshop had not been able to demonstrate. E.g. pie
  charts, Venn diagrams, etc.

• While it was true to say that several
  other methods had not been demonstrated, it was also true that new
  methods were being ‘invented’ every day by practitioners. It
  had to become our responsibility to write up our experiences so that
  learnings could be shared with all who were interested.

• Practitioners of PRA could also think
  in terms of developing techniques to close groups (i.e. to keep
  people out when their presence was unnecessary or distracting). Many
  times, interviews required an individual or a small group, but there would
  be a crowd both looking on and interrupting.

• Finally, a list of sources of PRA
  literature was circulated to all participants. Much of it was
  available free of cost. Participants were asked to both write and obtain
  the materials as well as to contribute articles to them for a wider reach.

Workshop
Review:

1. All methods
learnt in the workshop have enormous potential and value for use in the
field.

2. PRA methods can
be a useful way of orienting new staff to the field of rural development;
it is also good for a quick orientation to staff who are handing over and
taking over new positions and responsibilities.

3. The use of colour
can transform communication into something more efficient than if colour
is absent.

4. Where MYRADA
Projects are working in close collaboration with the Government and can
rope them in for some training (e.g. Dharmapuri) it is worth planning a
PRA workshop for them.

5. We must think in
terms of developing a PRA kit for the use of practitioners.

6. One useful
contribution of the workshop has been to provide models for documentation
of findings in easier, more attractive, and more understandable ways. The
next time such a workshop is held, more time should be spent on the
subject of documentation itself.

7. The next such
workshop should also include a separate session on the use of diagrams and
illustrate how different diagrams are suitable for representing different
kinds of materials.

8. It is very
important to inject professionalism into the practice of PRA methods;
otherwise, it can easily be misused or become an end in itself rather than
a means to an end.

9. If PRA assumes
that all knowledge is available with the people themselves, where does it
fit into the development philosophy? It was clarified that PRA is a method
of participatory learning; it is not
that all people know everything there is to know; it
is a method from which we can find out what it is that the people know,
what the people believe in,
and the reasons why some things are what they are. It gives us a clue
to the way people think, which is always a good basis for planning
development programmes.

10. It was pointed
out that though there had been a classroom session on learning to
discriminate between fact, hearsay and opinion, field presentations had
not been analysed to find out
if the discrimination had, in fact, been used in sifting through information.

11. Developing case
studies was seen as a very useful form of learning.

12. Time management
had not been very good, possibly because the group size was so large and
there were so many presentations scheduled for each day. Perhaps the ideal number for such a training
programme in future should be 15 to 24.

Follow-up
Plans:

a) To draw from
among senior staff of MYRADA projects a few persons who can be sent for
more PRA trainings when they are held elsewhere, and who can form a core
team within MYRADA to be used where required.

b) To hold PRA
training sessions within all projects and use PRA methods extensively
(wherever appropriate) in our day-to-day work.

c) To organise a
separate PRA training workshop exclusively for the staff of H.D.Kote,
Madakasira and Dharmapuri Projects.

d) To organise PRA
training programmes for Government staff wherever possible.

e) To write up PRA
field experiences for circulation among a wider circle of development
people.

f) To hold a review
workshop for this same group of participants on 7th, 8th and 9th August
1990 to study the work put in by them in the interim period.

g) To establish
inter-agency collaborations for sharing of development experiences.

(1)
The base paper used for this
discussion – RRA/PRA APPROACHES & METHODS contains more details and has been
circulated to all participants. Additional copies available on request.

(2)
For details see Dr.Robert Chambers’
book titled RURAL DEVELOPMENT – PUTTING THE LAST FIRST. Copies are available
with all MYRADA Projects. Extra copies (cyclostyled) of relevant chapters
available on request.

(3)Matrix Ranking was not detailed at
this workshop.

GROUP – I

WEALTH RANKING & LIVELIHOOD ANALYSIS PROCESS

For further understanding we requested the informants to
further classify the poor
lot as poor and poorest.

Again the informant group developed their own criteria
for the poorest class and started
classifying.

We felt it necessary to
further classify the families.

At the end of the second time classification the family
members were as follows:

a> Rich : Nil At the re-assessment two

b> Middle class : Nil families were brought from

c> Moderately : 2 middle class to moderately

d> Poor : 15 poor and two families were

e> Very Poor : 36 shifted to the poor class.

Once again the informants were asked to further classify
the very poor and poorest among the very poor.

The informant group developed criteria for poorest group
and proceeded the classification work.

* The 3rd and final classification result is as below:

Their criteria for judging the wealth was combined and
assessed. The criteria
for classification of families under different categories was arrived at
by the informant after discussing amongst themselves which are as follows:

List of informants :

Mr.Guruswamy
Mr.Veerathappa      Mr.Nagaiah
Mr.Basavashetty

Mr.Mahadevappa     Mr.Chennanjappa
Mr.Nagaraj     Mr.Basavanna

Conclusion :

The exercise of wealth ranking in Marur village of
Talavadi Project was taken up as part
of the RRA workshop held at Talamalai. The information presented and results obtained would not have been possible
but for the active voluntary participation
of the informants. The results clearly indicate the large of very poor families as compared to
poor and the poorest of poor.

The team expressed its abundant thanks to the informants
before their departure.

GROUP III

Participants: Mr.Herman, Mr.Manohar, Mr.Krishna Prasad
and Ms.Lathamala

Informants: 14 women of the sangha.

After a preliminary discussion about the procedure, the
team proceeded to Marur, where
a group of Harijan women sangha members warmly welcomed us, especially Herman who conducts trainings for them. In the
greetings and informal chat we explained
the reasons for our visit, which was to learn the happenings in the
village. They took us to house by the
side of the road for a chat. We discussed about the village,
houses, Sangha thrift and other sangha activities. The topic of
agriculture and employment
opportunities, brought up the idea that after the sangha started, many
of the sangha members ‘Neravagithe’ which means they have economically
and socially improved considerably.

This paved the way to the
economic classification of people into three categories i.e.
Anadi (very very poor), Anukoola ‘Neravagi’ (not that poor) and Saukar
(rich). A literate woman was found among
them to read out the names of the householders in the
village, then on a chart on the floor, 3 circles were drawn; one was
small, another slightly larger, and the
third still larger. The chit was presented to the literate
woman, who read out the names and the group after interacting placed the chit on the relevant
category.

Some of the names raised problems. They were not able to
place them in any of the three
marked categories. So they suggested another category between Anadi and
Neravagi, which was styled as Sumar which
meant poor people. The literate woman read
out the names and the group discussed as to which category they belonged
and then placed
the chit on the appropriate symbol.

When the concerned family members list surfaced, she was
asked to locate herself. After
much hesitation, and reflection she found her slot. In four instances the
chit placed was further discussed and
then shifted to another slot on common consent. Mahadevappa
who resides with his wife in another village, the group was not willing to accept him in any of the slots, as the
participants did not know how much property
the wife had. Since the group felt that he might return to the village, he
was also categorised.

43 families were identified as ‘Sumar’ and 11 as ‘Neravagi’.
No one was classified as ‘Anadi’
or ‘Saukar’.

Basis of Classification

1. ‘Anadi’ – very very poor : They have no land, no
house, no brothers or sisters, no children and often
starving.

2. ‘Sumar’ – poor : Little land about 1/2 acre, casual
worker, irregular employment,
one or two cattle, own house, more or less three meals per day.

3. ‘Neravagi’ – middle class : Educated, holding some
sort of Government or private
job, two or three acres of land, petty shops, 3 meals per day ensured, and a pretty good house.

4. ‘Saukar’ – rich : Employer, employs continual
labour, coconut plantation, big house,
scooter, storage of grains, lending money, excess food.

After this work was done, we had to go into livelihood
analysis which had to be done privately
with an individual family. So we schemed a strategy. We said we wanted to visit each household. Some people went back
home quickly to show us some of the
damaged portions of their house. We visited seven houses and in the
process identified the poorest family
with the help of a sangha member. We gave her the 43
chits identified as sumar, and asked her to point out the poorest among
them. She spread them out one by one and
picked out Rangaswamy’s family as the poorest.

Our extension worker, Susheela, was very helpful
throughout the process. We started
this meeting at 11.45 a.m and concluded by 1.10 p.m. After visiting the houses we started the livelihood analysis by
1.30 p.m. to end the whole process by 3.00
p.m.

Livelihood Analysis

The team was with Rangaswamy (32), his wife (28) and two
daughters, Kalamani (7) and
Sundari (5). They live in a hut, on a plot given to them by Rangaswamy’s
wife’s father.

They live on daily labour and in the lean seasons,
Rangaswamy collects firewood from
the forest and works as helper in brick making.

The interview started in an informal way – the team
shared duties: interviewer, recorder
and observers. Employment opportunities got priority. Seasonal work break-up: February to March he works as helper
to brick cutters. During the  agricultural
season he gets work rather frequently as an agricultural labourer. During
the lean season he goes into the forest to collect firewood.

The discussion then switched to food, availability,
intake etc. During Ashada no money
is available as no employment is possible and no one lends money as the
people believe it
is inauspicious to loan money during the particular period.

Credit – He used to satisfy his credit needs from
the money lender. After the formation
of the sangha his needs are usually met by the sangha. Necessity of loan arises during the lean season, festivity and
purchase of clothes.

Crisis – Health
hazards are the major crisis points of the family. Like when his child
had throat infection and had to be hospitalised he was forced to borrow Rs.200/-. Similarly when his wife developed
complications after a family planning operation
she borrowed Rs.150/- for treatment. Similarly when he himself had chest
and stomach problems they were forced to borrow money to meet treatment costs.

Expected Crisis – in the near future.
Construction of house. As he is one of the few
people who do not have their own home and his present shed could not withstand the rainy season he is bent on having
a roof over his head before the rains
start. As he is not able to mobilise funds from the Government, he is now trying to get it done
through the Sangha.

Highlights – To ascertain the poorest person we
planned to take the literate woman aside,
but the rest of the women flocked together to that place and Mr.Krishna Prasad called them for a discussion about the
village, they were forced to leave her alone
to sort out the poorest.

GROUP IV

Wealth Ranking at Marur

Village Entry : Informant Mr.Chikke Gowda and sangha
members welcomed the team.

– Bhajan Mandir was selected.

– Self introduction with members.

– Had a discussion with them on the village infrastructure.

– In this process it was found that wages were very low – Rs.3/- for women
and Rs.8/- for men.

– We clarified once again on wages and found that women were paid Rs.5/-
and men between Rs.10/- to Rs.13/-.

– The group was homogenous (Lingayat Community). They expressed that they were very poor.

– They did not come out with clear clarifications of poverty.

– We asked them individually about earnings, where they said that they did
not go for labour work but preferred to
work on their own land.

– It shows that no one is going for labour work.

– Mr.Santhosam said, can we classify our staff who is poor?

– Suggested that we play a number game for change (ice breaker).

– After the game we selected a common place for discussions.

– We gave them the chits to give to one member to classify the rich and
poor.

– They said it is not possible.

– Mr.Chikkegowda expressed, ‘ in our group if one member wants to take a
loan, we see the purpose, need, and on
that basis the loan is sanctioned.

– He said according to that he could classify the rich & the poor.

– As the group felt that a literate person should handle the chits,
Mr.Kempaiah was selected.

– He made 3 classifications with the help of three different size stones –
rich, middle class and poor, and decided
to discuss with the group before placing the
chits.

1st Ranking

Rich : 5
Middle class : 10
Poor : 29

Observation : A large number of chits were found
in the poorest category. The group was asked to do a
recheck.

Rich : 10
Middle class : 21
Poor : 18

Observation : Some of the poorest were put into
middle class and a few were moved
to the rich. The group was asked to do a 3rd ranking.

Rich : 8
Middle class : 18
Poor : 23

Some members of the group who were observing the first
two rankings suggested that
they were not satisfied with the ranking and changed the position of a
couple of chits.

One observer asked why Mr.Mahadevappa was placed in the
middle class. He should be
placed in the poor class because his family was a large one. That after distribution of land in
his family he would be in the poor class.

The group leader Mr.Lingappa in the earlier discussions
had expressed he was poor, but
the rest of the group had placed him in the rich category.

Mr.Chikkegowda who was placed in the middle class was
moved to the poor class because
the group felt his economic conditions were poor. Although he had land he had leased it out and was
working as a labourer.

A fourth ranking was done taking care to involve all
members.

Rich : 15
Middle class : 14
Poor : 20

Some comments from the group were –

– The mornings discussion was not very clear and authentic, as they did
not know the
reason for this exercise.

– The group expressed some kind of expectation towards programmes which were being drawn up and therefore they tried to
give us wrong information.

– After the purpose of the exercise was made clear and all members
included in the
exercise, it lead to an open and free participation.

GROUP VIII

Content Wealth Ranking