Sustainable Development at the Sharp End: Fieldworker experience in a participatory project

A reflection on some social development issues which have arisen in the first 5 years of the rainfed farming project in eastern India. The current paradigm is that seeing development as formal, planned and intended projects run by rule- and procedure-led institutions is no longer useful. A different vision is current: of mutual determination between individual action and social structures, of choice, resistance and struggle, of the power of the apparently weak, of the multiplicity and contingency of perceptions of reality and of the negotiated character of development outcomes. The paper describes the project, the assumptions on which it is based, relationships between actors and difficulties with PRA.