People’s participation is of crucial importance for the success of an extension programme. Nothing can be imposed on the people, rather voluntary participation of the people have to be encouraged and obtained. Participation in planning and implementation of programmes is important, because this process helps people to learn to change their behaviour for their own development.
Passive Participation People participate by being told what is going to happen or has already happened. It is a unilateral announcement by an administration or project management without listening to people’s responses. The information being shared belongs only to external professionals.
Passive Participation by People
Participation by consultation People participate by being consulted and external agents listen to their views. These external agents define both problems and solutions and may modify these in the light of people’s responses. Such a consultative process does not concede any share in decision making and professional are under no obligation to accept people’s views.
Interactive Participation People participate in joint analysis, which leads to action plans and the formation of new local institutions or strengthening of existing ones. It tends to involve interdisciplinary methodologies that seek multiple perspectives and make use of systemic and structural learning processes.
Participation in information giving People participate by answering questions posed by extractive researches using questionnaire surveys or similar approaches. People do not have the opportunity to influence proceedings as the findings of the researches are neither shared nor checked for accuracy.
President of Self Help Group Giving Information
Participation for material incentive People participate by providing some on-farm facilities like land, labour, irrigation etc. in lieu of certain external inputs like seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and even cash incentives etc. The people may not prolong the activities when the incentives end.
Functional participation If the above mentioned arrangement is for conducting on-farm demonstrations, on farm trial there is more of functional involvement and more of sharing knowledge by the people of external agency. People may also participate by forming groups to meet predetermined objectives related to a project.
Self Mobilization People participate by taking initiative independent of external institution to change systems. They develop contact with external institutions for resources and technical advice they need, but retain control over hour resources are used. Such self initiated mobilization and collection ‘action may or may not challenge existing inequitable distribution of wealth & power for eg: 3- tier Panchayati Raj system (local self govt.) in India.
Participants