Reflections on The Experience and Insights Gained
The insights gained from the experience of Ralegan Siddhi may be identified as below:
Approaches/methods Used for People’s Participation – Community Participatory in Watershed Management [3]
- Involvement and participation of the people is possible provided there is a committed and sincere leadership to educate, organize and motivate the people for the attainment of a common goal.
- Voluntary action either by an individual or people is an extremely vital factor to promote, facilitate and catalyze people’s participation in sustainable village development.
- A mix of commitment with flexibility, sensitivity, innovativeness and autonomy are essential for success.
- Holistic approaches to people’s participation in sustainable development are necessary for involving people whole heartedly. The approach being employed must have the potential to generate the spirit of cooperation, caring and sharing, adjustment, harmony, self-help, self-reliance and special emphasis on the resource poor farmers particularly women.
- Need-based planned initiatives and their proper priorization by the people themselves through democratic decisions with focus on the poorest and weakest and proper consideration for gender issues ensures better and fuller participation.
- If economic downfall is followed by moral downfall, than moral upliftment is also followed by economic upliftment. Assured economic benefits attract participation of the people.
- The first benefit must go to the poorest of the poor and first input must come from the richest of the rich to sustain the emotions and confidence of the poor. It is a successful method to bring people together. Once they come together they talk, discuss, plan and act collectively and share the costs and benefits in a just manner.
- Any process aiming at arousing people’s participation must start with the individuals.
- Sustained efforts over considerable long period of time are required for the people to gain confidence for self-development.
The basic components of environment, particularly land, water and vegetation are the vital links to bring rural people together as their livelihoods are closely dependent on these natural resources.