REFLECT in practice : literacy and change in India.

This paper describes the work of YAKSHI, a small NGO in Andhra Pradesh, with an independant tribal peoples' mass organisation. REFLECT was only introduced after suport was given to reactivate a declining indigenous system of community interaction known as the 'Gotti'. The Gottis facilitated the introduction of participatory methodologies associated with REFLECT and ten REFLECT circles started focussing on two issues identified as local concerns : challenging the cash crop economy and looking holistically at health. In each community only a certain number of adults chose to learn literacy which in many other circumstances would have been seen as a failure. However, the article describes how participants perceived it differently, saying that it was only necessary for so many people in the community to be literate, just as it was only necessary for a few households to be able to climb palm trees to tap valuable oil. Promoting participation of women in the Gottis proved difficult initially and the paper outlines the way in which this was addressed.