|
|
|
Rationale and background of the intervention
Decision making at the village level is not scientific or information based. It
is heavily influenced by the interplay of various factors like political
parties, groups in the political parties, castes, community and power struggles.
Discussions rarely happen, as such there is no information. No information or
asymmetric information is leading to arguments. Arguments are asynchronous as
the villagers are dealing with the past, present battles looking at future
implications. Arguments are related to entitlements, geographical locations,
utility, scales, and social aspects like caste, community, group, history,
gender, and equity and future probability of getting the entitlements. Debates
tend to go in rounds and heat is being generated more than light. Sadly,
Panchayats are politically infested to take a proactive role for unification of
the divergent views. In one sentence, there is no informed discussion of the
issue and a clear decision. Argumentative mapping, as a tool will help to have
structured discussions and lay out all the arguments so that every one can see
how complex issues are and others are making some valid points also. Once people
are clear, things tend to move fast. The GIS will help them to see the things
visually on the map and they can use the GIS for the exploration, discussion,
and arguments.The more the communities feel they took that decision after
deliberations and much thinking and feeling they own and the feel they are in
control of their lives, which in other words is empowerment. Once they own that
decision their participation in implementation, usage, and operation and
maintenance will be entirely different. GIS as a tool for the hard aspects like
data and argumentative mapping as tool for the soft aspects like deliberations,
discussions, objections, reasons, points, counterpoints can be merged and used
as a community decision support system.
The project is an
attempt to to demonstrates how the collective decision of the village
can be taken with help of scientific tools and data.
How we work
The project team identifies t he
issues/Problems in the village in the village meetings and eliminates
those which lacks the spatial component, The list of prioritized
problems will be prepared and the each problem as per its priority will
be placed in front of the village panchayat for the solution. The
arguments will be captured and all the solutions as per the priority of
the village board will be listed. After analyzing the arguments of the
board, the project team will collect the data required for the solution
of the problem and the same will be analyzed. After the analysis of the
scientific data the team finds out the scientific solution for the
problem which will be presented in front of the village board then the
team captures the arguments of the board members on the presented
solution and will find out the similar and differing aspects between
most prioritized solution suggested by panchayat and scientific solution
hence there will be an optimized solution. The scientific data collected
during the this process will be stored in database and a system with a
easy user interface will be developed for the future reference of the
villagers. Such system will be made available for the villagers at their
panchayat secretariats.
Advanced tools and techniques are used in the project Such as GPS
(Global Positioning system), GIS (geographic Information system,
Satellite imagery and other soil and ground water identification and
testing/ analysis techniques and methods.
|
 |
|
