PI: Prof. Shireesh Kedare, Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA)

Co-PI: Prof. U V Bhandarkar, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Vijay Honkalaskar, External expert

TCTD is focusing on developing technologies, product, and system to deal with the challenges facing India’s bottom sector. It is imperative for TCTD to employ participatory methods in their projects in order to increase relevance and societal impact of various technologies, product, and system. This will also help in (A) identifying problems most relevant for people to be taken up as projects for technology development, (B) finding solutions which are addressing concerns perceived by people / users / target groups and functional in the practical constraints, and (C) taking the solutions to people and increase its acceptance. The following activities would be undertaken with TCTD to fill a set of the above mentioned gaps. 1. Handholding the projects of participatory development 2. Common training for project staff and students at IIT Campus who are involved in the participatory development and dissemination. 3. Action research exercise/s to investigate and document a set of perceived people’s problems comprehensively and carry out a participatory and detailed investigation of a selected problem in a context.

Employing participatory practices in the present activities/projects at TCTD will soon increase the understanding of specific problems of people. In this respect, the present project may be taken up as an ongoing activity for different projects under TCTD and may be extended further based on the experience of the first year. The project will also identify new and relevant problems leading to more projects for technology development and dissemination.