Participation through Communicative Action: A Case Study of GIS for Addressing Land/Water Development in India

According to this paper, the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in the fight against accelerated process of land degradation offers opportunities to optimise the use of resources to rejuvenate the land. However, there are concerns about how development initiatives relying on advanced technological systems can effectively respond to local needs. Published in Information Technology for Development in 2003, this paper addresses the issue through a 2002 case study of the planning and implementation of a GIS-based intervention for land and water recuperation in Anantapur, a district in the state of Andra Pradesh, India. The study found that a participatory approach employed in the initiative encouraged local people to assume ownership of development programmes, informing them of the design and implementation process. Communication strategies used in achieving this goal included:

1. holding gram sabha or village council meetings;
2. the creation of local GIS database and a local GIS unit;
3. assigning academic research units to particular districts; and
4. promoting a public process of progress and outcome report.

It is argued that a participatory process can be effectively enabled through communicative action incorporating local communities and indigenous knowledge to the management of local information tools.

Evaluation/Research Methodologies:

Following an interpretative case study approach, the researchers employed multiple methods to explore the process by which stakeholders weigh different factors of the development intervention. The study focused on understanding the ways in which developmental interventions incorporating advanced technological systems (e.g., GIS) can achieve intersubjectivity and a common ground.

Anantapur, a district in India with below average annual rainfall district, was chosen as the case study site. Besides a long history of drought and extensive landmass afflicted with severe degradation, Anantapur is located in the Andra Pradesh, a leading state of e-governance initiatives and a center of GIS-based national programmes for land management.

Methods included archival reviews (planning documents, news reports, maps and guidelines), observations of GIS demonstrations, meetings with officials and villagers, and a series of interviews with villagers (n=45), local GIS team, NGOs (n=9), scientific institutions (n=12), and the state, central and local government officials (n=15). Data gathering was carried out in two phases covering eleven villages of the district.

The research team undertook data interpretation providing answers to the following questions:

1. What was the nature of partnership and communication at the institutional and community levels?
2. How different kinds of knowledge and expertise (technical, scientific, indigenous) were integrated?
3. What tangible effects, as seen by people, have arisen from the use of the GIS tool?

Key Findings/Impact:

The study found evidence of several communication-driven changes leading to the better incorporation of indigenous knowledge and the participation of target communities in the planning and implementation of a technology-based intervention on land and water recuperation. Such changes were introduced in the context of decentralisation efforts that created local watershed development teams (WDTs), which was made responsible for local watershed development design and implementation. Each WDT, formed by the representatives of villagers, government representatives, and non-official experts, was empowered to incur on expenditure subject to monitoring and audit from the local government.

Village council meetings were not a simple forum for people to voice their opinions. One of the goals of the meetings was to develop participatory maps in which people graphically depicted the distribution and status of various lands, water, and vegetative resources, and the location of proposed activities. Such maps became "boundary objects" that helped GIS experts to understand villagers' perspective.

Local GIS units were enabled to gather data and create GIS databases on available resources and locations. Each GIS unit comprised a person with background in civil engineering, a non-technical person, and a local village person. These units became the mechanisms to incorporate indigenous knowledge into the GIS design.

In India, academic institutions have historically undertaken the analysis of GIS databases for public projects. Assigning academic research units to each district improved the communication and accountability between experts and local communities. Furthermore, scientists confirmed that the databases created by local units were very accurate and useful for the analysis of existing conditions and resources. Finally, public reports of progress and outcomes of the intervention built a stronger base of support for the intervention.