Michel Pimbert and Tom Wakeford

We thank all contributors to this E-Forum for their engagement with the Prajateerpu debate and their often-insightful comments. We are humbled and re-invigorated by the expressions of support and solidarity from so many people, many of whom we have never met. We are grateful for the opportunity to contribute some brief reflections on our experience of the Prajateerpu process. However, readers should be clear that we are no more than two members of a wide network of those who constructed Prajateerpu – most of whom are in Andhra Pradesh. Many of these Indian individuals and organisations are also keen to share their perspectives over a more extended timescale – both in their native languages such as Telegu, Urdu and Hindi - and in English where possible. The following remarks are made in our personal capacity, not in the name of the Prajateerpu organising team.

Having been trained as natural scientists, both of us were schooled in the rigorous disciplines of exact science and positivist forms of rationality. Like many others we have both found that such an approach to learning and action can often obscure as much as enlighten. To us it is clear that attempts to democratically construct a pluralistic set of truths and subjectivities are far more likely to produce robust knowledge than the positivist’s search for a singularly objective standpoint or observer-independent truth. As individuals, and more recently in collaboration with each other and Indian partners, we have been exploring more holistic, inclusive and democratic ways of knowing and acting in the world. In helping design the Prajateerpu process, we have drawn on the evolving paradigm of participatory action research. The accusation made by some of our critics that our report lacks “objectivity” and “independence” misunderstands the participatory action research process. Prajateerpu’s methodology has been an attempt to allow the democratic scrutiny of both facts and values, bringing together critical analysis and an empathic, receptive eye that seeks to understand as much as possible from within. We believe that has succeeded in producing new knowledge and the opening up of the possibility of transformative action through research. This participatory research paradigm draws on the emancipatory traditions of Freire, Habermas and others, (some of whom have kindly endorsed Prajateerpu’s methodology in this E-Forum). For them knowledge and the process of coming to know should also serve democracy and the practical goals of social and ecological justice. By existing at the cutting edge of this new mode of enquiry Prajateerpu has become part of a series of controversies that we believe will strengthen action-research processes in the long-term.

In designing Prajateerpu as a deliberative and participatory process, our strategy was aimed at overcoming the partial and incomplete nature of different methodologies (e.g. scenario workshops, participatory video, citizens juries, stakeholder panels) by combining them in a particular sequence so that the internal rigour and credibility of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Overall, we think that robust and practically useful lessons have emerged out of the complex and dynamic interactions between the methods, arguments, actors and extended peer community that, together, formed the Prajateerpu process.

None of the organisers of Prajateerpu claim to have designed and facilitated a perfect and flawless deliberative process. Our report describes mistakes, limitations and omissions. As Robert Chambers says we have been unusually open in describing the shortcomings of Prajateerpu, encouraging criticism from our partners and colleagues as a pre-condition for open learning and constructive dialogue. In two instances we made a statement or implied a motive without providing all the evidence we had assembled. This was largely because those of whom we were critical might consider the evidence private. We regret that – for the sake of brevity – we did not always make the reasons for such absences clear. Correspondence that followed the publication of the Prajateerpu report allowed us to clarify or further a number of important matters of fact, those disputed by DFID-India in particular. Nowhere in our report do we say that DFID does not use participatory methods. Our comments on the lack of “use of appropriate methodologies to bring the voices of the poor into the planning and design of aid programmes” refer to questions of scale, quality of participation and independent oversight of participatory processes. We note with interest that DFID-India has still failed to cite any evidence of the quality or inclusiveness of the participatory processes it claims it has carried out in Andhra Pradesh.

With hindsight we realise how important it was to involve a panel of independent observers to check for bias and misrepresentation, quality of deliberation and pluralism, and vouch for the credibility and trustworthiness of the Prajateerpu methodology. This extended peer community, which included representatives of marginalized communities and more powerful actors, had absolute power to decide which methods and processes (representativeness of jury, video scenarios, balance of witnesses, quality of facilitation) were appropriate and what constitutes valid knowledge in that context. Through this innovation we sought to decentralise and democratise the knowledge validation process as well as ensure that the Prajateerpu’s outputs were as legitimate and representative as possible.

A second level of peer review took place prior to publishing the Prajateerpu report, and involved a diverse range of colleagues in India and the UK. However, we are not claiming that this makes this Prajateerpu report uniquely ‘objective’. In positivist science, what is called ‘objectivity’ is actually consensus between different people who rely on their own subjectivity and value-laden theories to decide what is (or what is not) trustworthy and universally valid knowledge.

When judging participatory action research, the use of positivist notions of validity and objectivity are, at best, intelligent looks in the wrong direction. At worst, they can become destructive and ill-informed attempts to ‘shoot the messenger and the methods’ in order to silence findings that risk causing discomfort to those in power in high places. Colleagues in both our institutes have plenty of experience of this. The need to widen the bandwidth of criteria used to assess the validity and quality of participatory action research is clear. Contributors to this E-Forum eloquently argue for such an epistemological broadening, and make specific suggestions (cf. Peter Reason, John Gaventa, Carine Pionetti and Andy Stirling). In our on-going analysis of participatory action research processes, we are looking forward to combining these suggested approaches with the criteria we used to evaluate the quality and validity of Prajateerpu (see section 4 of the report) and its enduring impacts. For example, has the launch of the Prajateerpu report in the UK Houses of Parliament in the presence of one of the jury members contributed to the emergence of a wide community of co-operative inquiry over the nature of British aid to the Government of Andhra Pradesh? How is the authenticity of the jury’s voices and verdict influencing an emerging democratic debate on food, farming and rural futures in Andhra Pradesh?

We need to ask why the richness, vibrancy and plain talking of the jury members on the need for a politics of autonomy have been largely ignored in discussions on the validity of Prajateerpu and its policy implications? (cf. Carine Pionetti, Biksham Gujja and Robert Chambers). With Grazia Borrini and Brian Wynne, we ask what can be done in future to ensure that “the powerful do not always come up on top by using their phenomenal capacity to ‘create’ public opinions through all sort of direct and subliminal means?"

The small and marginal farmers involved in Prajateerpu have offered a broad vision of a very different future than the one planned for them from above. Equally remarkable was their wish that more Prajateerpu exercises be done all over Andhra Pradesh. They, and the facilitators, were conscious that whatever had been done and said was partial and incomplete. One of the key challenges ahead is to facilitate similar democratic processes in each district of Andhra Pradesh, including diverse people and places in the choice of policies, technologies and institutions that shape social life and relationships with nature.

Michel Pimbert
Principal Associate, International Institute for Environment and Development, 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H ODD, UK (michel.pimbert@iied.org).

Tom Wakeford
Research Associate, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK. (t.wakeford@ids.ac.uk).