A Handbook for trainers on Participatory Local Development. The Panchayati Raj model in India

The Panchayati Raj  is a system of local self-government in India, introduced by an amendment to the Constitution in 1992, with the goal to provide a legal base for participation of the rural poor in local (district, sub-district and village level) government institutions. Decentralization of decision-making in India was considered critical for empowerment of the poor, in the light of persistent poverty, ineffectiveness of centrally administered local development programmes, and lack of involvement of rural poor in development.

At the time of publication of the Handbook (2003) some 238,000 Panchayats (village councils) representing about 600,000 villages had been constituted and about three million rural people, a third of whom, by law had to be women, elected to Panchayat bodies.

The Handbook is focused on the training needs of these newly elected Panchayat members, the majority of them semi- or even non-literate and unprepared for the responsibility of local governance. It is doing so by providing training principles and modules for trainers.

The training principles for participatory local development in the Panchayats  have led to a number of innovations, including a shift from an instructional to an interactive mode. Training that aspires to promote stakeholder participation in local development planning must use participatory methods in its design, context and conduct. The trainer should judiciously assume the role of a facilitator/catalyst; facilitating the trainees/participants to effectively use their knowledge/skills and experience for solving development problems. The local training needs must be carefully assessed and take into account rural development programmes and strategies, organizational culture and functioning of the decision-making process, in particular the attitudes, behaviour and local livelihood conditions and needs of rural people concerned.

The Handbook contains training modules that cover the different stages of participatory local governance, ranging from social mobilization to participatory community monitoring and evaluation. The training modules cover the following topics:

1)  Participatory planning and management: steps in participatory planning and implementation of local projects, as well as monitoring;

2) Social mobilization: role of the village councils, village women’s groups, and mass media;

3) Enhancing women’s participation: capacity-building of women in participatory local development planning, design of a training programme for women village council members;

4) Social audit: measuring, understanding, reporting and ultimately improving an organization’s social and ethical performance;

5) Participatory local resources management: identifying nature of local resources (natural, physical, human and financial) and the rights/responsibilities of local government institutions over their management;

6) Partnership building: types, principles, conflicts, joint management;

7) Conflict management: principles, approaches, styles and possible outcomes of conflict management;

8) Planning for disaster preparedness and mitigation: classification according to timing, predictability, response time, impact on different sections of rural people;

9) Participatory community monitoring and evaluation: aims, roles of community extension workers, steps, performance indicators (organizational strength, group participation, gender and environmental issues);

10) PRA tools: aims, principles and methods, benefits, tools (diagram, priority matrix, seasonal calendar, time trends, Venn diagram):

11) Local small-scale enterprise development by poor rural women: Panchayti Raj as catalyst of enterprise development by rural women, principles for developing entrepreneurial capacities in rural women, training key local leaders as trainers and planners for rural enterprise promotion, business basics, management of small rural enterprises.