The Tema Institute
Campus Norrköping
Bachelor of Science Thesis, Environmental Science Programme, 2008
Annie Strand
Real participation –
A benefit to all?
A Case Study in Central India
Rapporttyp Report category Licentiatavhandling Examensarbete AB-uppsats C-uppsats D-uppsats Övrig rapport ________________ Språk Language Svenska/Swedish X Engelska/English ________________ Titel Title
Participatory projects – a benefit to all? - A minor field study in rural India Författare
Author Annie Strand
Sammanfattning
Abstract
Participation has become a crucial aspect for development and development aid thus it ensures empowerment and appropriate gain for the stakeholders. Participation is important especially for managing natural resources like water but the participatory approach is not always satisfying. This Minor field study has looked at two different projects participation from the stakeholders view and tried to answer what the stakeholders gain is for from participatory projects. This is done by interviewing the initiators of the projects and the villagers involved in it. The interviews showed a difference between the projects where the local development project had a more constant participation from start to finish while the research project stationed in Sweden had participation at times and in a different way. The study showed that more efforts need to be done to define participation thus it is now used in many different ways. There is also a need for improved documentation on the participatory process to assure participation and improve the procedures.
ISBN _____________________________________________________ ISRN LIU-TEMA/MV-C--08xx--SE _________________________________________________________________ ISSN _________________________________________________________________
Serietitel och serienummer
ISRN LIU-TEMA/MV-C--08/18--SE Handledare Mattias Hjerpe Nyckelord Keywords Datum 2008-06-19
URL för elektronisk version
http://www.ep.liu.se/index.sv.html
Institution, Avdelning
Department, Division
Tema vatten i natur och samhälle, Miljövetarprogrammet
Department of Water and Environmental Studies, Environmental Science Programme
Abstract
Participation has become a crucial aspect in development assistance and research in that it is expected to empower and benefit a wide array of stakeholders. Participation is important, especially in natural resources management, such as water resources, but the participatory approach is not always satisfying. This Minor field study has evaluated how local stakeholders view the participatory processes in two different projects and their views on what they have gained from these projects. This is done by interviewing the initiators of the projects and the villagers involved in it. The interviews showed a difference between the projects where the local development project had a more continuous participation from start to finish while the research project, stationed in Sweden, had participation at times and in a different way. The study showed that more efforts need to be done to define participation thus it is now used in many different ways. There is also a need for improved documentation on the participatory process to assure participation and improve the procedures.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to take this moment and thank the people without who this thesis could never have been carried out. First of all I would like to thank all of the coworkers of the local NGO, Srijan without who I would not have been able to execute my study, I also found friends for life, thank you Rajesh for your patience and advice and Manohar for your contagious laugh and Namita for our lovely talks. I would also like to thank all of the villagers of Neemkedha who were patient and kind and answered my questions with great care. I will never forget anyone of you and hope to come back and visit someday soon. I also want to thank Julie Wilk and Anna Jonsson whose project I sat out to study and who helped and prepared me beforehand. I also want to thank you for the group of friends you had ready in Sanchi that I could borrow for my time in India and that now also are my friends. I want to give a special thanks to Mattias Hjerpe, my supervisor at Linköping University who has helped and supported and believed in me even when I had no idea what I was doing. I want to thank Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) for giving me the scholarship that made it possible for me to conduct this study. I also want to thank TP group who also granted me a scholarship which helped me stay away from the 50 RS hostels. Last but not least I want to thank my family for their inspiration and support. First, my loving boyfriend who stick around even though my bad mood on stressful days. I want to thank my mother who first introduced the environmental thinking in our family through recycling and organic goods. My sisters have always inspired me and showed me that I can do anything I want. Last but not least I want to thank my nieces and my nephew for making me forget about everything else for a while. I really appreciate this chance to conduct the field study within my area of interest, water, and being able to experience the immediate problems of mismanaged water and water shortage in reality. I now more than ever now that I want to continue to work with international water management. This chance to understand the importance of communication and participation in this process has been very valuable and will stay with me for life. Annie Strand, Norrköping, May 2008.Content
1 INTRODUCTION...4 1.1 AIM... 5 1.2 CENTRAL QUESTIONS... 5 1.4 PLAN OF THE THESIS... 6 1.5 ABBREVIATIONS... 6 2 BACKGROUND ...6 2.1 STUDIED AREA... 7 2.2 THE STUDIED PROJECTS... 7 2.3 RELATED RESEARCH... 10 3 METHODOLOGY ...13 3.1 INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW... 14 3.2 WORKSHOPS... 14 3.3 INTERPRETERS... 15 3.4 ANALYSIS THROUGH GROUNDED THEORY... 15 4 RESULTS...16 4.1 THE INITIATORS GOAL AND AMBITION OF PARTICIPATION... 16 4.2 THE PERCEPTION OF PARTICIPATION IN PRACTICE... 17 4.3 SUGGESTIONS ON IMPROVEMENTS ON PARTICIPATION... 18 4.4 SOURCES OF ERROR... 19 5 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ...195.1 WHAT GAINS ARE IDENTIFIED BY LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS FROM PARTICIPATORY PROJECTS SUCH AS PIM AND WPI? ... 20
5.2 WHAT KIND OF COMMUNICATION AND PARTICIPATION WAS USED IN THE PROJECTS AND DID IT WORK? ... 20 5.3 IS THE GAIN GREATER WITH PARTICIPATORY PROJECTS INSTEAD OF TOP STEERED PROJECTS?... 22 5.4 HOW WAS PARTICIPATION ACCOMPLISHED?... 23 5.5 WHY IS IT IMPORTANT THAT EVERYONE PARTICIPATES? ... 24 5.6 ARE THERE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENDERS AND SOCIAL GROUPS WHEN IT COMES TO PARTICIPATION AND WHY IS THAT? ... 24 6 CONCLUSIVE DISCUSSION...25 6.1 FUTURE RESEARCH... 26 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY...28 8 APPENDIX ...30
8.1 INTERVIEW GUIDE RESEARCHER ON 5 DECEMBER 2007 ... 30
8.2 BACKGROUND INTERVIEW GUIDE WITH VILLAGERS IN GROUP ON 31 JANUARY AND 1 FEBRUARY 2008 ... 31
8.3 GROUP INTERVIEW GUIDE VILLAGERS 2 AND 3 FEBRUARY 2008 ... 32
8.4 INTERVIEW GUIDE STRUCTURAL SINGLE INTERVIEW WITH VILLAGERS 8 FEBRUARY 2008 ... 32
8.5 INTERVIEW GUIDE WATER USER ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT 10 FEBRUARY 2008 ... 34
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1 Introduction
It is well‐known that development assistance can cause all sorts of difficulties and the dependence that it can lead to is a commonly debated issue. In 2006, 80 000 development assistance projects were carried out in the world (Wenar L. 2006, p.1‐23) and the projects often assist countries in their development which leads to reliance towards the development assistance organization (Karlström, 1996, p.101‐102). Another debated issue is what effects the development assistance projects imply to the stakeholders. All projects are evaluated, and most of the projects reach their goals, but the evaluations are often conducted from a short term point of view (Odén, 2006, p.143‐ 144) and only cover the result of the project and not the process itself. Consequently, it is hard to identify the direct long term gain that a country benefits from development assistance projects, and to know if the gains remain after the project has been finished.
The same can be said about research projects based on field studies, the goal with these has often been just to test a theory or build their research and has often no direct connection with the local situation. Bottom‐up communication is another term for taking the stakeholders views to the “top” and using them in decision‐making. The opposite is top‐down communication, where the government or other authorities make decisions without consulting affected stakeholders. Top‐down communication is becoming a more seldom used concept and authorities all over the world are becoming aware that the way to development is through participation (Brohman 1996. p.251‐252). The views diverge on how to define participation and according to Inagaki (2007) it can be defined as anything from just taking part of the benefits to being part of the project from planning to evaluation. There is a lot of talk of participation, and the questions are gathering. What is participation? How is participation accomplished? Is it participation only when everyone participates? These questions will try to be elaborated in this thesis.
The last years’ trend in both research and development assistance have been a stronger emphasis on participation, because the authorities are realizing that long term development is dependent on the stakeholder’s involvement. In the 60’s, political scientists said that democracy is a form of participation in decision‐making, but it shows the values of most and not the values of all, social scientists then started with participatory approaches to empower the people, this was a way to oppose to the top‐down approach that ruled up until then. Recently the trend of participation in science has become focused on trying to gain support for theories (Van Asselt2002, p.1).
Water is one of the world’s most mistreated natural resources because almost everyone takes the access of clean freshwater for granted (The United Nations 2003, p.5). The pressure on the water resources are growing and thereby the world’s clean freshwater resources keeps getting more scarce and as the populations keep growing there is also a growing need for more freshwater to produce food for the growing population and a behaviour change is the way to solve this. Communication and participation is although the key to solving the water management issue internationally and to create this needed behaviour change. The participation of local stakeholders plays a significant role in the managing of natural resources and in India for example the Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) uses participation in watershed management (Kolavalli and Kerr 2002). It is important to make the natural resources everyone’s property and thereby make it everyone’s interest and Kolavalli and Kerr (2002) argue that the participatory projects achieve a better resource management than technical counterparts because it involves the stakeholders and creates capacity.
Van Asselt (2002) says that “Furthermore, systematic reflections on the participatory process in terms of added value, biases and lessons learned are rare.” She also argues that there is need for more research on “How to spread the results and process of participation” and that participation often is inadequate and imprecisely documented, which methods and processes used in the project etcetera. It is thus hard to know what kind of participation was used in the project and consequently
what were the results. The stakeholders own perceptions and the gain are not quantified and to the results of the participation is often inadequate because the questions of who participated and what, how and why they participated often remain (Brohman 1996). There is not much research in the area of the participants own thoughts and experiences of participation, this study has looked at just that, the stakeholders own thoughts on the participatory process.
1.1 Aim
The aim of this study is to identify what impact one research project, Water Poverty Index (WPI) and one development assistance project, Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM), both based on broad and active participation, have had on the villager’s situation in the village of Neemkedha in Madhya Pradesh, India. What do the villagers identify as gains or lessons learnt from the projects? The ambition is to look at the villager’s view of participation, if they feel as though they been able to influence the workshops and get their voice heard and if they think the projects have been participatory. The aim is to identify how participation was carried out and how it can be improved and to understand why it is important that everyone participates. The aim is to identify if there are any differences between women and men and different social groups when it comes to participation and their gain from the projects and why that is. The study will be based on the stakeholders own thoughts about the project and the participatory process.1.2 Central questions
The central question that this study will try to answer is as follows: • What gains are identified by local stakeholders from participatory projects, such as PIM and WPI? These underlying questions shown below will be answered in this study: - What kind of communication and participation was used in the projects and did it work? - Is the gain greater with participatory projects instead of top steered projects? - How was participation accomplished? - Why is it important that everyone participates? - Are there differences between genders and social groups when it comes to participation and why is that?1.3 Delimitations
In this thesis the PIM‐ and WPI‐projects has been studied. Interviews have not been conducted with all affected stakeholders in these projects; in the PIM‐project only one of the involved organizations and the villagers has been interviewed. The actual gain from the studied projects, though hard to measure, has not been quantified. Estimations have been done by the villagers and NGO‐staff; however, in those cases that quantification of gains existed, these facts have been used. The focus area in this thesis is water resources management; it might as well have been another area but since these projects were appropriate, these projects were chosen. The Minor Field Study (MFS) was conducted during eight weeks in rural India under the months of February and March of 2008. In the summer and fall of 2007, a preliminary study was conducted to prepare for the field study. During April and May of 2008 the final analysis of the material was prepared and the compilation of this thesis was finalized. Both the preliminary study and the final analysis were conducted in Sweden.
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1.4 Plan of the thesis
• Chapter 1: the introduction with aim, central questions and delimitations are found here. • Chapter 2: the background of the study, where information on the area of the study and on the two studied projects can be found. Here is also a part with related research where the references used in the analysis and discussion is presented and motivated. • Chapter 3: the methodology used in this thesis can be found here, the chapter is divided in sections about individual interviews, workshops, interpreter and a section about analyse through grounded theory. • Chapter 4: the results are divided in three categories; first the theory and ambition of participation, the WPI‐researchers and local NGOs thoughts about participation and how it benefits the projects. The next category is the villagers and the WUA‐presidents thoughts about the projects and participation, finally their thoughts about how to improve and deeper the participation. There is also a section about sources of error.• Chapter 5: this chapter is divided into sections with each question being analyzed and discussed separately. Each question is tied to both the empiric material and to relevant research to get a better sense of the material and create a better understanding for it.
• Chapter 6: the discussion from previous chapter is discussed in a greater correlation to see if the results can be adapted to other projects and in a greater context, the most important findings of the thesis in brief. Thoughts on future research are also found here. • Part 7: the bibliography of the thesis is presented here. • Part 8: the interview guides from the thesis are included as appendixes in this section.
1.5 Abbreviations
• WPI – Water Poverty Index • PIM – Participatory Irrigation Management • MFS – Minor Field Study • NGO – Non Government Organization • GIS – Geographic information System • WUA – Water User Associations • WRD – Water Resource Department • SHG – Self Help Group2 Background
Below is the background and foundation of the study, there is both information on the area of the study and on the two studied projects. This is important to know to be able to see the differences between the projects and understand the situation in the area. The related research references used in the analysis and discussion is presented and motivated below.2.1 Studied area
In India the fast growing population increases the pressure on the available water resources and thus the available volume per capita is decreasing. This means that the available water for producing food is falling and more food needs to be produced as the population grows. 83 percent of all water withdrawal is for irrigation, implying that water, not land will be the hold back for producing food in the future (Blomqvist, 1996, p.10‐11).The studied area is a village in the Vidisha district in Madhya Pradesh. The state of Madhya Pradesh is located in central India and is one of the largest states in the country. It has an area of 308 000 km2 about which almost fifty percent is arable and the potential irrigation in Madhya Pradesh is 2.4 km3 but only about half of it is utilized today because of inadequate irrigation infrastructure. Madhya Pradesh has ten major rivers and has a high share of rural inhabitants (73.3 percent) and most of the rural water supply within the state is based on ground water (Government of Madhya Pradesh 2007, p.100‐105, 206‐211).
The studied community is a tail end village, i.e. the final village on an irrigation canal which therefore gets water last. There live around 100 families in the village and of them about 10 are rich, 30 are middle class and about 60 are poor. The main income source is agriculture and there are about 800 hectare cultivated land in which they grow soy, gram and wheat. They get two crops a year of which they sell some at the market in Vidisha, the district capital. They have buffaloes, cows, goats and chickens and every day each family uses around 400 litres of water for their animals, they also use 200 l for washing, 50 l for drinking and cooking. There are three Self Help Groups (SHG) of poor women in the village; with a total of 32 members. Lack of healthcare is considered as the biggest problem in the village as well as the fact that numerous girls do not attend school.
2.2 The studied projects
The two projects WPI and PIM studied in this thesis and the reason these projects were chosen was their focus and pronounced ambition of participation. The fact that they both took place in the same village with the same participants made the comparison easier and the fact that both projects were concerning water was a bonus since it is such an important issue. Figure 1 below show the PIM‐ and WPI‐projects in correlation with each other and the SHG‐project on a time axis to illustrate when this study was carried out in relation to the other projects. The PIM‐project was finalized while WPI had one year left when this study was conducted. This difference in time gives two different views on participatory projects. In PIM‐project the study is conducted a year after it is finished and this can thereby show the more long‐lasting gain from a participatory project and get the villagers view of what happened and what remains from the project after it is finished. The WPI‐project has one year left until it is finished and the last workshop was carried out just before the study was conducted and the villagers can thereby say what happened as the experiences are fresh in their minds. It was taken into consideration that the difference in time can create a somewhat bent image of the participation at comparison. The two projects different budgets and available time can give different outputs and possibilities and finally the two projects have different aims with the projects since one is a research‐ and one is a development‐project and these differences in outcome can thereby give different results in terms of participation and gain.~ 8 ~
Figure 1. The two studied projects, PIM and WPI, in a time axis together with an ongoing project in the same village; this is to show where in the different projects my study was conducted.2.2.1 Water Poverty Index (WPI)
There are different ways to assess water stress at local level and the Sida/Sarec project called “Defining a Water Poverty Index through stakeholder participation in the Bhavani River Basin” is one way. It is a three year research project that started in January 2006 (Jonsson and Wilk 2005, p.1‐8) and is testing the potential of WPI, when used at village level (Wilk and Jonsson 2007, p.1). WPI is originally caught by Sullivan at Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (Wilk and Jonsson 2007, p.2) and is built up on five indicators; resources, access, capacity, use and environment and it aim to give a holistic view to the challenge of water management (Sullivan and Meigh 2007, p.114). The project is in progress of modifying WPI into Water Prosperity Index to bring the index to a more local level; this would help obtain a structure to facilitate meetings between government, NGO and the villager’s etcetera (Wilk and Jonsson, 2007 p. 2). The collected data from the project can be used in Geographic information System (GIS) technology and the WPI can simplify the complex task of water management and project prioritization (Sullivan 2002, p. 1195‐1210).
The WPI‐researchers have been in field three times with around six months interval and have conducted two workshops per occasion with men and two with women in addition to observations in the village. The WPI‐researchers see a problem that they meet the villagers to short time and too seldom, the official three hour workshops often become one and a half, because people come late and leave early. The WPI‐researchers does not allocate a lot of time for planning and evaluation of the workshops in Sweden. Rather they try to use the time at the location as much as possible to evaluate the work and interpret the experiences. This process has not been continued back in Sweden, which could be improved. The WPI‐researcher says that it might be good with more planning, but since the workshops never go as planned it is not worth putting too much effort into planning.
The communication between the WPI‐researchers and the villagers is working, even though the interpreter does not always understand the purpose of the exercise and has to be corrected. It is sometimes hard to know if the villagers understand since the communication is made in Hindi and do not always say if they do not understand because they are shy and polite, according to the WPI‐ researcher. There were some difficulties that the people on the workshops were not very organized and that not the same people participated in all the workshops. There was some difference between men and women when it comes to the communication in the workshops. The men were more self confident while women were more cautious in their approach. The local NGO advised the researchers in the WPI‐project to hold separate workshops between men and women.
The workshops start with a presentation of WPI and then the researchers present the results from the previous workshop. The villagers validate these results. After that they have different exercises for the villagers to do. During workshop 1A, the women drew maps of the wells, hand pumps and sanitary facilities in the village while, men drew the canal and irrigation system. In workshop 1B the WPI‐researchers held voting exercises regarding their favourite season and then made a time line of rainfall and crops with the men and a timeline of during what season them and their family was sick with the women. During workshop 2A, the women estimated their domestic water use per day and person and the men estimated the water use for irrigation. In workshop 2B the women followed up the domestic water use and answered a questionnaire about their water behaviour while the men mapped their use of irrigation water. On workshop 3A the women mapped their homes and which hand pump they used and how much water they used in different areas, the men discussed who owned irrigation pumps. In workshop 3B the women answered where they would turn if they had a water related problem and the men was asked about how they use the river in different seasons and both women and men were asked about the plants, trees and animals in the village. The WPI‐project used locations where the villagers felt comfortable, like the school and the location for their SHG meetings and had all their workshops during afternoon/evening. The WPI‐project is now at its final year and wants to examine if their attempt to communicate with the villagers has succeeded and if their hope that a more holistic way to look at water will remain after they are gone (Wilk and Jonsson 2007, p. 4). The fact that the purpose of this project is not to improve the water quality or to ensure the access of clean water is taken in consideration, yet it is interesting to identify what kind of influence these sorts of research‐projects have on the stakeholders and what they learn from the workshops.
2.2.2 Participatory Irrigation management (PIM)
The Madhya Pradesh government conducted the Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) Project in Vidisha in association with local NGOs including Srijan and an international development agency between 1999 and 2007. The International development agency paid for 50 percent of the costs, the Madhya Pradesh government for 30 percent and then the people in the villages paid for the last 20 Percent. The local NGOs aim with PIM was to improve the irrigation canal and to provide timely water to the poor tail end farmers, to mobilise the farmers and to get them to understand the importance of managing their water resources. The tail end villages got their water 30‐35 days later than the head villages because they blocked the canal; this along with the fact that the canal was inadequate gave the tail end village poor conditions for a well functioning irrigation. The NGO want to involve people from the targeted villages both with money and labor so they get a sense of ownership of the canal. There were some problems getting people to pay, they did not see their gain from the project (Srijan 2 2008). The NGO used field trips and walks along the canal to get the villagers to understand the situation (Srijan 1). Then they started with the rich farmers who could afford to pay and when some started paying the others started following, they thought that “if they are paying I should to”, the contributions were different depending on the villagers assets and thereby their use of the canal.
The project also started Water User Associations (WUA) consisting of several villagers and engineers from the Water Resource Department (WRD). They are there able to decide themselves over what improvements of the canal that their money should be used for (Srijan 1). Earlier there were problems with the maintenance of the canal since the villagers thought it was the government’s responsibility because they paid water fees and the government thought it was the villager’s responsibility. The PIM‐project is thought to be a model that can be replicated in other states in India (Srijan 2, 2008).
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2.2.2.1 The local NGO
Srijan is a NGO that is stationed in India since 1997 and stands for Self‐Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action, and only conducts participatory projects. They work in several areas in India, Vidisha; Madhya Pradesh is one of those and they work in 287 villages and 15 000 families. The NGO have had a total investment of 60 million rupee (≈1.4 million US$) in a five year period (Srijan 3) and the NGOs overall ambition is to help poor people, people with less than 1 USD per day to live on (Srijan 2). Srijan works to enhance the poor people’s access to natural resources and work for capacity building to manage these resources in sustainable way water and its resource management is the main focus of the organization (Srijan 3). The NGO has different projects and have been a part of PIM as mentioned above and also introduced SHG and hold SHG meetings to empower poor women.
2.3 Related research
There is a lot of research in the area of communication for development and the importance of participation in both development and research project but not enough on the participants view on participation wherefore this study is initiated. The selected references are divided into subject and is presented and motivated below and the chosen references are chosen because they are considered to clarify the empiric material.2.3.1 Communication for development
There are many different strategies for communication and for development, when putting them together; participation has become one of the favoured approaches, below are the chosen references of why participation is a motivated approach.
Brohman (1996) discusses the different views of participation in different scientific disciplines, the different types of participatory approaches and the importance of the NGOs knowledge about participation thus illustrating the complexity of participation; the fact that there is a lack of evaluation of the participatory process is argued and thereby motivates the study of this thesis. After the top down approach there is a need for participation to achieve development. Participation is however difficult to achieve and a part of that is the incomplete evaluation of participatory projects. The questions of who participated, what they participated in, how they participated and why they participated are often not answered (Brohman 1996). He also argues that participation can be seen as a means to reach better results in the project, but also as a purpose of a project.
Kolavalli and Kerr (2002) discuss what can be accomplished with participation, what good participation can do for development. They also present some of the problems facing participatory projects and discuss ways to overcome them. They also discuss that “true” participation, where the stakeholders together make decisions and share the costs often just occur in NGO projects and that other actors often lack the knowledge to achieve participation in the same extent and that there is a need for improvement. Moreover, they argue that participation among the local stakeholders plays an important role in natural resource management and that participatory projects perform better that the technical counterpart in those projects.
Mody (2005) elaborates a participation‐based communication strategy and how to accomplish participation. She discusses the fact that participation is not always participatory in the same way and discusses positives and negatives with local contra international projects, emphasizing that there is no universal approach of participation and that it needs to be considered in the process. She argues that the approach must be tailored to the communication skills and habits of the projects
targeted group, the effectiveness of the approach is also depending on how the sender is perceived by the targeted group. The gain of the projects has to suit the receiver, a better postal system might not benefit the poor because they cannot afford to use these services, and thereby it is important to developing the gain and approach of the project starting from the targeted group.
2.3.2 The participatory approach
There are different approaches and theories on how to accomplish participation. It is often said that participation is good, but are there different types of participation and different approaches. Arnstein (1969) discusses, the at the time, new concept of citizen participation and tries to clarify it trough a ladder of participation (Figure 2) where the projects participation is evaluated and graded according to the different steps on the ladder. This gives a view of the initiation on the concept of participation and the ladder makes it easier to evaluate what kind of participation different projects possess. When he says that “There is a critical difference between going through the empty ritual of participation and having the real power needed to affect the outcome of the process.” he argues that participation without any change in the distribution of power is just a meaningless process for the stakeholders. Degrees of citizen power Degrees of tokenism Non‐participation Figure 2 Arnstein’s ladder of the different levels of participation (Arnstein 1969). The first two steps of the ladder: manipulation and therapy are considered non‐participatory and the purpose of them is to educate and “cure” the stakeholders. The next part of the ladder is different degrees of tokenism, these are informing, consulting and placation where the stakeholders can hear and get heard but do not get any power. The last part of the ladder is different degrees of citizen power, partnership, delegated power and citizen control. These different steps areCitizen control
Delegated power
Partnership
Placation
Consultation
Information
Therapy
Manipulation
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simplifications and in reality the lines between them are not as clear. The ladder is chosen because it is a way to visualize the different steps of participation. The fact that the ladder is designed for citizen participation is not considered to affect the grading of the development project although it might affect the grading of the research project since its aim is not citizen power.
Inagaki (2007) discusses the participatory approach for development assistance and how it is the favoured communication strategy of many development organizations. She also discusses the lack of definition of participation and the problems faced with participatory projects. She argues that participation has to mean that the targeted group is a part of the planning process and not just in the implementation or evaluation of the project, otherwise the project is disguised as participatory and also that projects do not often report to which degree their project is participatory. In theory participatory projects are open‐ended and influenced by the participants but in reality the projects are often goal oriented and use the participants to achieve a pre defined goal, because of the lack of documentation of the actual participation in the projects, this is hard to see. Despite the problems with participation, these projects show much greater contributions than traditional projects that are designed to spread a message and to look at it one individual separate while participatory projects creates empowerment and look at the social correlations.
Van Asselt (2002) discusses different methods for participation and the problems of defining these, the lack of documentation of participation and what problems that can leads to. This adds a view of why this study and similar studies are important and what they can contribute to the process. Van Asselt (2002) argues that there is a need for non‐scientists to play an active role in the participatory process to be able to achieve participation and gain their knowledge, values and preferences. She argues that “Furthermore, systematic reflections on the participatory process in terms of added value, biases and lessons learned are rare” Implying that participation often is inadequately documented and it is thereby complicated to know what kind of participation was used and what it lead to.
2.3.3 Gender and social differences in participation
There are differences in people’s participation and different social groups or genders have different needs and behaviours, these references help discuss the differences in participation.
Dahlkwist (2004) discusses male and female language and the differences in their communication and approach, to understand possible differences in women and men’s participation he also talk about communication over social and cultural boundaries. Dahlkwist (2004) argues that in India different social groups has to keep a certain distance to people of a higher class and the lower the class, the longer distance. Dahlkwist (2004) says that men often talk more about real issues while women talk more about their feelings, in this case their feelings about the participation within the projects. He goes on to say that women often wait for their turn to talk while men just say what is on their mind which can lead to a difference in participation.
SDC (2005) discusses different gender roles when it comes to decision making and management and also gender stereotypes in the use and management of water resources. SDC (2005) argues that water and sanitation often is considered the women’s domain, but they are not consulted or involved in the decision making process in any way. They are also the ones who educate their children and teach them about natural resource management which make them important stakeholders in these kinds of projects.
2.3.4 Consequences of chosen references
These references are thought to make the view of participation clearer, why participation is good, how to use it and differences between genders and social groups. There are a lot of references that praise participation without considering the downside, the chosen references are considered to look positive but at the same time realistically on the benefits and faults of participation. The chosen references might give the consequence that the view of participation is realistic and not as idealized as in some cases. The fact that the chosen references are up to date can give the consequences that the first face of participation is passed and both the positives and negatives with participation have been seen.
The chosen references will be used to validate and understand the empirical material. The references will help explain why participation is good and what it can lead to, how participation is achieved and how to improve it. The references will also explain any differences in participation between different social groups and gender. If other references would have been chosen the results of the analysis might have been different but theses references are thought to support the empirical material and not stand on its own.
3 Methodology
The methodology used in this thesis is found below, the chapter is divided in sections about individual interviews, workshops, interpreter and a section about analyse by using grounded theory. The methods are presented and their influence on the results is evaluated.
The Minor Field study is based on qualitative interviews with different stakeholders from the projects. The first interviews with the villagers are conducted in groups as a workshop to ensure a first dialogue on which to build coming interviews, then another workshop is conducted to get them talking about the projects and the communication and participation in those. The workshops are complemented with individual input through individual structural interviews with the villagers, to backup the data from the workshops. Semi structural individual interviews are conducted with the local WUA‐president, the local NGO‐members and with the WPI‐researcher.
The reason for choosing the village of Neemkedha and the PIM‐ and WPI‐projects is because of the districts and local NGOs connection to Linköping University. The connection is both through previous MFS‐students and through the professors/researchers in the WPI‐project. The fact that the villagers are used to projects can lead to a better understanding of what the workshops and interviews in this study are about and thereby decrease the need of explaining the process. The fact that the villagers know of the connection to the University can make them not say all their thoughts about the WPI‐project because they feel restrained by politeness and the fact that the interpreter works at the NGO connected to the PIM‐project might have made the villagers polite and unable to say all their thoughts about the PIM‐project.
The WPI‐project was introduced through a professor on Linköping University and thereby the idea of investigating the participation within this project started. The PIM‐project was located in the same village with the same participants and had the same pronounced ambition of participation, the idea of examine the experiences and listening to the villager’s view of the participation within the project was thereby clear. Within this study there are two perspectives, one is to look at the initiators, the WPI‐researchers and the NGOs, thoughts about the participatory process and what they wanted to achieve and the other is to talk to the villagers and the WUA‐president and get their perception on what the projects actually achieved and thereby understand how it can be improved.
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The workshops as well as the structural individual interviews with the villagers and the semi structural single interview with the WUA‐president required an interpreter. In the interview with the WPI‐researcher and with one of the NGO members a dictating machine was used to ensure a complete interview report, in the rest of the interviews the use of it was declined. The dictating machine can make some people uncomfortable and it is important to make sure it is ok with them before it is used and to handle the recorded material with care (Thomsson 2002, p.89‐91). The interviews were conducted in English to eliminate any problems in translation. The selection of respondents was carried out with cooperation with the local NGO and the interpreter and the questions for the interviews were decided beforehand each interview and the answers from one interview could be the base for the next interview, the guides can be found as appendix in this thesis.
3.1 Individual interview
The individual interviews with the villagers were structured interviews; they are often shorter and have a more detailed interview guide than unstructured interviews. Structured interviews give therefore a more focused interview because of the steering questions and that suited the intensions of the individual interviews with the locals. Another approach is unstructured interview which often has more open questions and areas to be discussed and can therefore have a winder area to discuss. Then the interviews can be somewhere in between, semi structured which means a mix of more open and more steered questions or semi structured can mean that the questions are a bit steered. (Kylén 2004 p. 17‐51)Semi structural interviews were held with the WUA‐president, the members of the NGO and with the WPI‐researcher. This approach was chosen to ensure an open discussion but which is yet steered into communication and participation within the projects. The selection of respondents for the individual interviews was conducted in consideration to the aim of this thesis. A interview was conducted with one of the WPI‐researchers who are also project managers of the WPI‐project, the aim was to get her view of the aim of and the participation in the project, this interview was 1 hour, this interview guide is appendixes 8:1. The interview with the local WUA‐president was about his view on the participation of the projects, this interview took about 1.5 hours, and this interview guide is appendix 8:5. Three interviews were conducted with members of the local NGO, both with the head of the local organization and with two field workers. These interviews were to get their view on participation and participatory projects; these interviews took about 1 hour each and the interview guide is appendix 8:6.
The selection of respondents for the structural interviews was three men and three women in the different social group’s poor, middleclass and rich men/women which make a total of eighteen respondents. The interpreter assisted in choosing appropriate respondents by showing me in which houses people from which class lived and who would have time to speak with me. Participation within the two projects was not important when choosing respondents for this interview. These interviews took about 30 minutes each, the interview guide for the structural interview is appendix 8:4.
3.2 Workshops
Workshops were held in this study and worked well since the questions discussed in this study do not concern the respondent’s most inner thoughts and are not sensitive. It might have helped the villagers to talk about common experiences and thoughts about the projects to get them thinking about the participation (Thomsson 2002, p.71‐74). Before the workshop the question on who should attend was discussed with the interpreter and the co‐workers of the NGO, and it was decided to have separate meetings between women and men to ensure that the women would talk.
The initial workshop with the participants had less complicated questions to get to know them and to know about their village and their situation and this initial workshop gave the respondents a chance to prepare for the next workshop. These workshops took about 2 hours each, this interview guide is appendix 8:2. In the second workshop the questions were about the project and the participation, these workshops took about 2 hours each, the interview guide is appendix 8:3.
There was a problem that it was not the same people that came to both workshops. The first workshop was supposed to be an introduction and a chance to feel more comfortable in the next one; this was solved by making a short introduction on the second workshop.
3.3 Interpreters
Interpreters were used for the workshops as well as for the individual interviews both structural and semi structural with non English speaking respondents. According to Dahlkwist (2004) it is important to have an interpreter that possesses cultural knowledge and can mediate to avoid misunderstandings, cultural knowledge is important when communicating over cultural boundaries, what is obvious in one culture can have the opposite meaning in the next.
It is important that the interpreter is professional and have cultural knowledge to earn the trust and feeling of security from the respondents. The interpreters used in this study were employed by the local NGO and had thereby professionalism and the local cultural knowledge, although not as knowledgeable about the subject of the workshops/interviews. That lead to some misunderstandings because they did not always understand the terminology, these were cleared trough discussion before each workshop/interview.
Another problem was the fact that the interpreter became too involved in the interview and become a part of it and that lead to a need to soften their involvement to ensure their professionalism. There is some uncertainty about how well the interpreter understood the intention of some of the questions and if the answers are the one given by the respondent or altered by the interpreter, the problem was handled by asking additional questions and making sure it was really the respondent’s thoughts. Using an interpreter is using an extra step which can lead to a distance between the interviewer and the respondent. All of the predicaments mentioned above will be taken in consideration when the material is analyzed.
3.4
Analysis through grounded theory
The theory used as a base for this thesis analysis is grounded theory, grounded theory was introduced by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967 and means that the analysis initiates from the empiric data and is thereby grounded in the data. It is the respondents own perspectives that shape the analysis, the theories should originate from the data. According to Glaser it is important for the researcher to not possess any pre‐understanding when gathering the empiric material to ensure openness to the data. According to Strauss the most important thing was to ensure the interaction between the researcher and the empirical data, when using grounded theory it is crucial to get an as diverse selection of respondents as possible, this requires significant local knowledge. (Dalen 2007 p.49‐ 51) In this study this knowledge was accomplished by the help of the local NGO and the interpreters.
Grounded theory is aiming to arrange reality to better understand it, to gather and develop ideas from the data and not just to compile the data, to make new research models to understand and explain the examined phenomena. These models consist of assumption deeply grounded in the
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empirical material and do not need to be scientifically proved, the researcher construct a view of reality, not the only one but a possible one. Grounded theory is considered especially suitable when studying the interaction between people and what consequences they bring, which is what this study is aiming to do. (Guvå et al. 2003 p.5‐16) The fact that the studied subject is rarely documented motivates using grounded theory to understand the phenomena.
The analysis were done according to Dalen (2007) and started with the devaluation of the data from field notes and the dictating machine. Some of the real raw material gets lost when using an interpreter because it is their interpretation that reaches the researcher. The use of specific words, tone of voice or body language can get lost in the translation, the respondent’s age, gender, social status are taken into consideration when analyzing the material. After the data was evaluated, it was compared and the differences in it were identified in the coding process and the now new data was organized into concepts, the connections between the concepts were identified and the core process was discovered, Strauss and Corbin calls this “to find the story line” in a project (Guvå et al. 2003 p. 33‐ 43).
During the entire process of grounded theory the findings, ideas and impressions of the data gathering and processing was written down, the final stage of grounded theory was sorting; sort up all the data from interviews and notes and write the full story. (Glaser 1998 p. 177‐208) Grounded theory cannot accomplish a final answer to a research study but can give a base to build on; a grounded theory is often examined and tested from different aspects to assess if it has any relevance (Guvå et al. 2003 p. 93‐ 94).
4 Results
The results below are divided in three categories; first the theory and ambition of participation; the WPI‐researchers and local NGOs thoughts about participation and how it benefits the projects. The next category is the villagers and the WUA‐presidents thoughts about the actual participation in the projects and the final category are the thoughts about how to improve and deeper the participation. There is also a section about sources of error last in this chapter. These results are merely compiled in this chapter and the analysis and discussion is conducted in the following chapter.
4.1 The initiators goal and ambition of participation
The study shows that the WPI‐researchers and the NGO’s ambition with the projects were to create participation within the different projects. The local NGO’s ambition with the PIM‐project was to improve the canal and to provide timely irrigation water to the tail end farmers, it was also to mobilise the farmers and to get them to manage their water resources in a better way than before. The WPI‐researchers’ ambition with the WPI‐project has been to further their work within this area and to develop some of the components for WPI. The WPI‐researchers believe that the villagers can gain a more holistic view of water after being exposed to the WPI‐project and they can also earn publicity from the government and water authority; the eyes will be on them. The local NGO believe that participation can be very useful when discussing water management in a village because it starts from their thoughts and problems, which make it easier for them to relate to. For example in the PIM‐project the villagers themselves organize meetings and collect contributions so they learn how to solve problem themselves, the local NGO has taken on the role of mediator and facilitator to connect people, a role which is slowly decreasing as the project moves forward. According to the NGO, participatory projects are a policy issue, the Indian government decided to
shift the responsibility from the government to local communities. The NGO think this is good because the villagers learn to collect information, work together and about problem solving. By contributing something like work or money, their involvement and enthusiasm is increased and it also creates transparency and trust and makes the implementation process easier. The local NGO can see nothing negative with participatory projects except the extra work that comes with the difficulty to make the villagers understand why they should participate. Also the fact that it is impossible to get everyone involved in a project and thereby not get everyone’s perspectives is considered a fault, but the NGO says that in traditional/top steered projects there is only one approach which leads to less initial work but an uncertainty if it is the right approach since it does not initiate from the villager’s problems. Some co‐workers in the local NGO do not consider it a problem to get everyone to participate; they talk to a number of villagers individual and then get the information validated in a workshop. Others do consider it a problem that everyone does not participate because they do not get a chance to develop their understanding of the issue at hand and their perspectives are not heard. The WPI‐ researcher says that the WPI‐workshops are controlled in a way; the participants are presented with areas to talk about and given exercises to carry out in the workshops, the WPI‐researchers try to create a forum were the villagers feel like they can talk if they want to, an open atmosphere for communication.
4.2 The perception of participation in practice
The WPI‐researchers do not document the participation on the WPI‐workshops but have experienced poor women and richer men as the major participant groups. The local NGO can see a tendency that richer people might not come as many but talk more in the meetings, because the poorer people are afraid to go against the rich. Some of the poor women have an already organized forum with their SHG‐meetings making them more used to discussions and participate in meetings. The WPI‐researchers have noticed a better spread of social groups in the workshops with men, but the richer men are still more in numbers. If there had been more meetings or workshops in large groups, the richer men might take over a bit but since the WPI‐workshops are in small groups the poorer men also talk. The WUA‐president has been to all of the PIM‐ and two of the WPI‐workshops and in the PIM‐project the WUA‐president is the leader who calls the meetings into order while his role in WPI is that as a participant as any other. Many of the villagers say that they attended both PIM‐ and WPI‐workshops, a slight overweight towards men can be seen in the interviews. Of those not attending the workshops the most common reason was that they did not have the time to attend or did not feel the topics on one or both projects was relevant to them. Of the ones who attended the workshops, most said that all social groups were represented, although some noted the lack of rich women. According to the WUA‐ president every group was present during the PIM‐workshops while during the WPI‐workshop neither rich men nor women were present. Other than that, he can see no difference in participation between different genders or social groups, neither when it comes to number of attending the workshops nor when it comes to the participation at the workshops. The rich women said in interviews that they could not attend, since they were not allowed to go outside their house. The WUA‐president believes that the reason the WPI‐workshops did not have the same participation as the PIM‐workshops were because they were not conducted in a proper way. The proper way to conduct a workshop, according to him, is to talk to him first and then have the whole village plan the workshops, as was done in PIM; this way everyone can participate.
The respondents felt like both the interpreters and the project members listened to them and most of the people who attended the workshops talked, but some people had things to say that they
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did not say because of the language problem within the WPI‐project and because some could not get their voice heard, both men and women. Those who had problems with this said that single interviews or more Hindi speaking people could improve their participation, another thought was to have separate workshops both between gender and social groups. According to the women in the village there was no other forum where they can talk about the water problems discussed in the WPI‐workshops, while the men identified the WUA‐president as a canal for their water related concerns. The villagers did not see any communication difficulties in the two projects, besides that some people might not have understood the WPI‐pentagram. Respondents remembered a lot of exercises from the WPI‐workshops, for example the drawing of maps of irrigated land, sanitation and hand pumps, which they thought were most instructive.
The villagers claim that they have gained a lot from the projects, according to themselves and the WUA‐president they have learned about the village water availability and how to save water, also about sanitation and how to schedule irrigation to make it more efficient. They now say they understand their own water use better and the importance of sanitation of water and that they use less water since the projects started. They now have a functioning irrigation canal providing the village with timelier and increased amounts of water (30‐40 percent) thanks to the PIM‐project. They have learned how to work together to maintain and use the canal and are better at handling problems and are a part of the decision making about the canal and the costs of any improvements or repairs are paid through contributions. Water is a more and more mentioned subject in the village and it is thought to be a combination of the two water projects and the fact that this year’s low rainfall leads to a decreasing water availability, the river is dry and there is a fear of water shortage in the summer.
The local NGO can see some change in the villager’s water behaviour that they can connect with the WPI‐ and PIM‐projects, for example they use less water and are more aware of their water use, these changes are however difficult to measure and only perceptions. The villagers are now considered to have a better use of their water resources and are motivated to keep improving. The WPI‐ researchers on the other hand have not heard anything about a change in the villager’s perception or behaviour from the WPI‐project from the villagers or from the local NGO.
The villagers considered the WPI‐ and PIM‐projects to be good and they were satisfied with the knowledge that they had gained. The villagers felt like both PIM‐ and WPI‐projects has been participatory and that the participation has lead to a better access of water. The WUA‐president says that people play a real role in participatory projects, they contribute with both money and labour and work together as a community. There is also a consensus that they want more workshops and detailed information about water and sanitation issues.
