Mascarenhas, J.

This letter from Jimmy Mascarenhas of MYRADA includes interesting comments on a PRA in India. What has been assumed to be a homogeneous community was revealed to have hierarchical castes within it. Farmers also have their own institutions which are separate from formal institutions: village leadership rests with revered elders or dynamic youngers. Women also had a 'shadow' committee comprised of the wives of the informal male committee. Information revealed by a mapping exercise and the mapping process are also described.

This paper explains what transects are, what they can be used for in PRA, what types of information they can elicit, and describes different types of transects in detail. There are lists of Do's and Don'ts, and examples of the pictorial outcomes of transects.

This note on interviewing in PRA begins by emphasising the importance of communication in interviews, contrasting good interviewing with questionnaire interviews. On methods and principles of interviewing, the paper stresses desirable attributes of interviewers, types of interviews (individual, group, informal), categories of interviewees (e.g. stakeholders), interview teams and materials plus some notes on the interview process. The paper ends with a list of Do's and Don'ts and some general tips.

The purposes of this note on planning and implementing a PRA are to share MYRADA's most recent experiences in PRA and to provide a basis from which the reader can proceed by adapting existing methods and inventing new ones. It begins by introducing the rationale for the use of PRA, and some applications to participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation of integrated rural development programmes, resource management programmes and poverty alleviation programmes, and to the study of seasonality and coping strategies of the poor.

This report presents the participatory methodologies and methods used by MYRADA, an NGO working in South India. Avoiding the terms 'rapid' and 'appraisal', it prefers to use the term Participatory Learning Method (PALM). The key principles and applications of PALM are outlined, and a typical PALM training exercise introduced. This involves village camps, during which a series of interactions occur between villagers and outsiders which lead to an enhanced and shared understanding of complex rural situations.

This document chronologically lists the evolution of PRA, based on the personal accounts of the author. The developmental context in which PRA was first born is briefly outlined. The widespread interest in PRA leading to its expansion across institutions, sectors, project life cycles, information/experience sharing and in training is discussed. A brief comparison between ZOPP and PRA is made. Finally, the documents lists in detail the evolution of PRA in the Indian context and the increasing involvement of OUTREACH in PRA.

This paper presents an overview of the work of MYRADA, an NGO in South India. Its origins and major programmes are described. Relations with the government are of prime importance in the key areas of its work, and are discussed in detail. The adoption and use of PRA by MYRADA is described, and the key principles (behaviours and attitudes, sharing and methods) are discussed. Successes in applying and spreading PRA are noted, with the main caveat that more work needs to be done to change attitudes and behaviour among government staffs and to sensitise them to the potential of PRA methods.

The paper describes some of the experiences of OUTREACH, an NGO based in south India, of using PRA in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of rural development projects. Attempts were made to increase the accuracy of information obtained through using PRA methods, and to broaden the application of PRA to a wider range of topics and situations. For instance, percentages were obtained by asking villagers to use 100 seeds to indicate monthly labour requirements of women and men, or to show the seasonal distribution of fish during the year.

Outreach was brought in to facilitate a "participatory self evaluation" of a HIDA/MYRADA agroforestry programme: the process of the workshop is detailed here. A SWOT analysis was carried out, looking at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the programme in small groups. On the second day, the key questions identified were discussed: levels of participation in the programme and peoples' priorities; institutional issues; technology; training.