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This article is the third part of a Working Paper concerned with management of the Shivalik Hill system (which extends from Nepal to Pakistan at the base of the Himalayas). This article describes collaboration between the Government Forest Department and the Hill Resource Management Societies (HRMS). A case study is made of a Joint Management Agreement in Godam village. Five days of village meetings were conducted during which the Bhanjida households were identified as the main users of the forests for material to make bamboo baskets. The discussions took the form of conflict resolution between the Bhajidas and other members of the village. It was recognised that special attention needed to be paid to the participation of women in forest management. A second case study is given describing the forging of a Joint Management Agreement in Prempura where conflict existed between users of bhabbar and fodder grasses.

This paper presents the results of research on how street children, hotel boys and the children of pavement dwellers and construction workers in Bombay meet their daily needs. Section two describes the factors which lead to children being in such circumstances and the inadequacies of public provision in meeting their needs. Section three describes the organisations responsible for undertaking the survey and the unconventional means by which contacts were made with the children. It also describes how involving the children in the survey became a means of establishing better contact between the children and the government agencies and voluntary organizations seeking more effective public responses to their needs and problems. Section four presents the findings of the research. (Author's summary)

This long and detailed study describes how the mandal (administrative area) of Devikere in Jagalar, Karnataka State was selected as the appropriate site for an Action Aid anti-poverty project. A socio-economic survey was conducted by a multi-disciplinary team using mainly RRA techniques. The methodology employed appears to have much in common with farming systems research. A section of the report is devoted to health issues. This includes: nutrition and food availability; mother and child wellbeing, health practices and beliefs; the environment; housing; occupation and health services. The anthropological/ethnographic technique of using case studies of individuals adds a strong human dimension to the study. Separate sections are devoted to women, infrastructure and sanitation, and socio-economic conditions.

This paper documents the rapid rural training carried out for project workers in the rainfed farming project for Eastern India in 1988. The primary objective of the project was to enhance production in a region where without irrigation only one crop can be cultivated each year. Village motivators were assigned to villages with the aim of animating communities in order to faciltate the potential for sustainability on completion of the project. The training introduced several new participatory methods of RRA to the project workers which it was hoped would lead to a better insight into problems and potential solutions. The training focused on developing skills to ensure that information collection and analysis was partcipatory and iterative. Emphasis was placed on developing a satisfactory model to faciltate this process, RRA was the key research principle and methodology. Included in the training were field visits using RRA tools, diagram drawing, participatory games, and the evolution of a model work plan for the village teams. These are well documented with examples from the discussions and presentations.

In this paper, some history of and reasons for the PIDOW project in India are given. It provides an eco-history of the region in which the project started, describing how the natural resources disappeared over a period of decades. The early stages of the project and the approaches used to initiate activities are dealt with, as are ways in which strategies had to be changed. For those who now know the PIDOW project as a successful example of participatory watershed management, the paper provides interesting insights into the project's evolution.

This article looks at the general question of systems analysis and analyses the components of a 'system'. As such, it is useful for anyone concerned with working participatively with systems of any sort. The question of how RRA methods can be used in conjunction with agroecosystem analysis to develop research and development priorities is considered.

Refering to a previous article, which attempted to assess the accuracy of various relatively rapid means of stratifying a rural population in Bangladesh, this paper argues that that exercise was somewhat premature. Little progress can be made toward improving the efficiency with which succeeding generations of fieldworkers conduct their enquiries, until more is known about the way in which existing practitioners have divided their time and the considerations behind these allocative decisions. The paper offers an account of how a stratification of a rural population in Bangladesh, in the course of fieldwork, was carried out.