The rush to scale: lessons being learnt in Indonesia

This paper describes how the Indonesian government incorporated elements of PRA to launch a nation-wide programme of participatory village planning in 60,000 villages to be completed within the 1995-1996 budget year ending in March 1996. The article analyses the mistakes committed in attempting to scale up too fast in the face of too many constraints: too few sufficiently experienced trainers resulting in poor quality training, unrealistic budget and time constraints imposed by government, and the pre-existing top- down culture of development planning in Indonesia. The article shows in very clear terms that participatory approaches cannot be tagged on to existing national programmes, and that scaling-up will fail if it is rushed.