Reflections on the e-forum on participatory processes for policy change by the authors of the Prajateerpu report

This article comments on the e-forum on participatory processes for policy change concerning the Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes which grew out of a citizen jury and scenario workshop in southern India. The process drew on participatory action research to allow for scrutiny and critical analysis, and resulted in producing new knowledge and the possibility of transformative action through research. One of the most important lessons learnt is highlighted as involving a panel of independent observers to check for bias and misrepresentation, quality of deliberation and pluralism, and vouch for the credibility and trustworthiness of Prajateerpu methodology. It is also stated that in judging participatory action research the use of positivist notions of validity and objectivity is redundant. Thus, there is a need to widen the criteria used to assess the validity and quality of participatory action research.