Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

Uno Winblad with Shiksha Karmis, Rajasthan, 1998.
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primary school age in the village attend? The girls too? If not, why? Were
there other problems? What did the parents say about the school? When
the schools had been in operation for a few years we could also look at
retention rates, achievements and the functioning of the support structure.
Another major concern was to prevent the Shiksha Karmi Project from
reverting to normal educational sector routines of inefficiency and corruption.
From our previous field-based work in India we knew that it can be
extremely difficult to find out what is really going on in a project. In rural
Rajasthan there is an age-old culture of silence and a deep distrust of visiting
officials. A common practice in the villages is to put on a show to impress
visitors. Government officials willingly take part in such charades. They want
no negative feedback, as their own reports to higher levels must be positive.
Nor could we rely on official reports with their city-male perspective and
emphasis on input and quantitative data. The well-known tendency amongst
urban-based officials to concentrate on easily reached project sites and avoid
the hardship of visiting remote villages also had to be taken into account.
Our approach was to focus on what was happening in the project villages,
including the most remote ones, and through dialogues with local NGOs,
Shiksha Karmis, parents and children give the Joint Review a clear picture of
what was happening and early warnings about potential problems.
Our first task was to recruit a highly qualified team in India: all women,
university graduates and NGO activists. We had to have women team mem-