Rural Communities' Perception of Poverty and Well Being: Some Case Studies in a Participatory Framework

From a position of disenchantment with traditional approaches to poverty measurement and alleviation, it presents an analysis of rural communities' perceptions of rural poverty as revealed through the use of PRA. The study covers three Indian villages where PRA techniques of mapping village households and land use, were used to arrive at a wealth ranking. The paper also suggests policy measures based on the rural community's perceptions. In this paper, it is observed that the villages' criteria of well-being is a much broader concept encompassing a wide range of socioeconomic and environmental aspects of living, as well as access to public services.