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Participatory Rural Appraisal was conducted in two villages in Southern India in order to supplement formal survey information. One of the objectives was to develop a procedure for determining emic indicators of health and nutrition security. Four types of PRA were employed: i) participatory mapping (conducted separately by women and men) - to identify 'high' and 'low' risk households; ii) food charts - participants use beans to indicate the relative importance of foods consumed; iii) women's activity chart - beans are used to indicate the relative time spent on daily activities. iv) seasonality chart - this method was conducted with small groups (differentiated by gender and caste) to understand the yearly changes in rainfall, harvest of staples, food consumption, labour demand, childhood illness and women's illness. An ethnographer used in-depth interviews, key informant interviews, focus group and participant observation to conduct six household case studies in the two survey villages. The PRA techniques generated emic indicators of food-security which could be compared with the etic indicators of the formal survey.

The introduction to this book asserts that RRA has been used in coastal communitites, but "what has been lacking so far are attempts to use RRA systematically in looking at fishing communities, their way of life and livelihood, and the coastal ecosystems in which they live". This manual attempts to fill that gap. It is specifically intended as an introduction to RRA for people in departments of fisheries, local fisheries services and NGOs.

This paper presents the results of research on how street children, hotel boys and the children of pavement dwellers and construction workers in Bombay meet their daily needs. Section two describes the factors which lead to children being in such circumstances and the inadequacies of public provision in meeting their needs. Section three describes the organisations responsible for undertaking the survey and the unconventional means by which contacts were made with the children. It also describes how involving the children in the survey became a means of establishing better contact between the children and the government agencies and voluntary organizations seeking more effective public responses to their needs and problems. Section four presents the findings of the research. (Author's summary)