Participatory Rural Appraisal
- An Important Tool To Know Rural Realities For Technology Transfer In Aquaculture And Agriculture -

By Ajit Kumar Ng *

INTRODUCTION

People planning aquaculture development require certain basic information about the environment in which they are working and the various physical factors which are likely to affect aquaculture activities. More and more aquaculture workers are now realizing the importance of understanding the social, economic and cultural context of whatever projects or interventions they are involved in.

Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) were developed, at least initially, as tools to help development workers to collect certain types of information more effectively. They should be regarded as one of a range of possible approaches to information collection and planning.

PRA uses similar guidelines and tools to RRA but focuses on the stimulation of participation by local people. Specific techniques are used to encourage greater involvement among people and to enable them to take the leading role in appraising conditions and identifying solutions.

PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is the process of involving local people in the analysis and interpretation of a rural situation. The local people i.e. the participants take a leadership role in collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting information, and in the process impart knowledge and development insight to the specialists and extension agents.

PARTICIPATORY METHODS

1. Do it yourself
The activities of rural people can be appreciated better if an outsider who wishes to understand rural realities does them himself or herself. Do it yourself gives practical ideas of complexities involved in rural activities.

2. Team contracts
Team contracts developed by all the team members help ensure good group dynamics and one person may be elected to monitor team interactions to provide feedback.

3. The night halt
It provokes change in outsiders' attitudes: they sleep and eat as villagers do; it allows for early morning and evening discussions when people are less busy; and it is an explicit commitment by outsiders to village life.

4. Rapid report writing, with self-correcting notes
It is essential to record, as a team, the key findings before members disperse to their own organizations. Report writing is made easier by writing a brief summary of how diagrams were constructed and of the key findings. Individuals can be encouraged to keep a private diary or series of notes to focus on things they would like to improve the next time.

5. Shared presentations
The key findings should always be presented to villagers and outsiders. This is an important opportunity for cross-checking and feedback. Professionals present and invite comment and criticism. This is a fundamental reversal of roles and is crucial to establishing the trustworthiness of the findings.

6. Transect walks and direct observation
These are systematic walks with key informants through the area of interest, observing catchment area, asking, listening, looking, understanding land and water use, seeking problems and solutions. The transect walks and direct observation give an idea of insight into natural resources and also provide an account of places of unexploited or underexploited potential exist. The findings can be mapped on a transect diagram.

7. Wealth ranking
Wealth ranking is used to classify households according to relative wealth or well-being. For villagers fishery and related activities provide the major source of income.

8. Social maps
In social map, villagers are then asked to indicate the relative wealth status. Individual assets such as land ownership, water area, animals, and tools can be marked for each household.

9. Semi-structured interviews (SSI)
This is guided interviewing and listening in which only some of the questions and topics are predetermined; other questions arise during the interview. The interviews appear informal and conversational, but are actually carefully controlled and structured. SSIs are a central part of all the participatory methods.

10. Types, sequencing and chains of interviews
Many types of interviews may be combined in sequences and chains. These include key informant interviews, by asking who the experts are and then putting together a series of interviews and group interviews, which may be groups convened to discuss a particular topic.

11. Participatory mapping and modeling
This involves constructing, on the ground or on paper, maps or models, using materials. Great play is made of the issue of who holds the stick or pen. The person who holds the stick talks about what is most important to him or her. As maps take shape, more people become involved, and so want to contribute and make sequential changes. There are many types of maps: resource maps of catchments, villages, forests, fields, farms, home gardens; social maps of residential areas of a village; wealth rankings and household assets surveys on social maps; health maps, topical maps such as aquifer maps drawn by the water diviner or soils maps by soils experts; impact monitoring maps, where villagers record or map pest incidence, input usage, weed distribution, soil quality, water quality and so forth. Participatory mapping also play a role in fish farming for rural areas because it was locally feasible, profitable and had a marketable product.

12. Seasonal calendars and activity profiles
Seasonal constraints and opportunities can be diagrammed month by month throughout the year. People represent relative quantities and patterns of rainfall, disease, soil moisture, crops, labor, food consumption, illnesses, prices, fuel, migration, pests, income, expenditure, debt, children's games, and so on. Daily patterns of activity can be similarly explored by charting typical activities for each hour of the day, amount of effort, time taken, and location of work.

13. Time lines and local histories
These include technology histories and review, crop histories and biographies, livestock breed histories, labor availability, trees and forest histories, education change, and population change.

14. 'Chapatti' or Venn and network diagrams
Venn diagrams involve the use of circles of paper or card to represent people, groups, and institutions. These are arranged to represent real linkages and distance between individuals and institutions. Overlap indicates flows of information, and distance on the diagram represents lack of contact.

15. Matrix scoring and pair wise ranking
These methods are for learning about local people's categories, criteria, choices, and priorities. For pair-wise ranking, items of interest are compared pair by pair; informants are asked which of the two they prefer, and why. Matrix scoring takes criteria for the rows in a matrix and items for columns, and people complete the boxes row by row.

16. Flow diagrams
This shows the cause effect relationship amongst different factors and can be effective for understanding the inter-linkage amongst different aspects of rural life. It can help in identifying the problems, the determinants, their nature and linkage. This can help in suggesting policies for minimizing constraints and other bottleneck and can also help in farming of feasible action.

17. ADVANTAGES OF PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL (PRA)

1. Identification of genuine priorities for target group
2. Devolution of management responsibilities
3. Motivation and mobilization of local development workers
4. Forming better linkages between communities and development institutions
5. Use of local resources
6. Mobilization of community resources
7. More sustainable development activities.

18. LIMITATION OF PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL (PRA)

1. The availability of a number of specialists in different disciplines and team building with the local people may be a problem.
2. The changing attitudes towards rural people in order to be willing to learn from them and to appreciate the importance of their participation in decision-making.
3. Lack of suitable accommodation.
4. Inadequate funds.
5. It may not be possible to cover several villages in one season.

19. CONCLUSION

PRA is not evolved in scientific laboratories nor in intellectual writings but in field's situations. This can be considered as a major strength in finding rural realities. PRA can make an extremely important contribution to ensuring greater participation in development activities in the field. PRA can be used for decision making, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the development project.

Through PRA we can get the actual picture of rural area, their geographical, socio-economical, environmental, cultural issues including aquaculture activity. This information will help in the successful implementation of a new technology in a rural area.

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* Ajit Kumar Ng is a PhD scholar in Department of Microbiology, UNESCO Centre for Marine Biotechnology, at College of Fisheries, Karnataka
He can be contacted at ajit_b2007(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)in
This article was webcasted at e-pao.net on 19th April 2009.

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