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'PUTTING THE LAST FIRST' Evaluating the Participatory Approach of Robert

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 SHODHBRAHMAPUTRA:
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ACADEMIC RESEARCH
FOR SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

Dr.Parameshwara
Associate Professor and Chairman
Dept.of Commerce, Mangalore University, Mangalore

D.E.Joseph Rubert
Professor, Dept. of Management Studies
Arunachala College of Engineering for Women
Manavilai,Kanyakumari District,Tamilnadu

Dr.Badruddin
Professor,Dept. of Political Science
PES’s RSN College of Arts & Science,Goa

D.Sanitha K.K
Research Associate
Kerala Academy of Social Sciences,Trivandrum,Kerala

Prof.G.Brishya
Assistant Professor, Dept. of English
St.John’s College of Arts and Science
Ammandivilai,Kanyakumari District,Tamilnadu

www.multispectrum.org
 CONTENTS
S.NO TITLE AND AUTHORS PAGE
NO

1 Ukraine- Russia Crisis: A Perception 1-12

Dr Badruddin

2 ‘Putting The Last First’ 13-26

Evaluating the Participatory Approach of Robert

Chambers in Rural Development
M. Riswan

3 Evolution of Hindu Nationalism: From Golwalkar 27-35

to Deoras
Gautami Amonkar

4 Factors Affecting Employee Engagement During 36-45

COVID 19 Pandemic in Higher Institutions in
India: Specifically for E-Learning
Shweta Srivastava

5 Content-Based Instruction-An Approach For An 46-55

Effective Speaking English Classroom
V. J. Vinita & Dr. M. Ilankumaran

6 Depicting moral corruption of individuals in 56-63

Temsula Ao’s Soaba
Dr. Binoy Chetia
 Shodhbrahmaputra: Multidisciplinary 2022
Academic Research for Sustainable Innovation

‘PUTTING THE LAST FIRST’

Evaluating the Participatory Approach of Robert
Chambers in Rural Development

M. Riswan
PhD Research Scholar (Commonwealth Fellow - ICCR)
Department of Sociology
University of Kerala & Senior Lecturer
Department of Sociology
South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Robert Chambers is a popular figure in constructing

participatory models in the development activities since the
1970s and 1980s. ‘Putting the Last First’ is a more suitable
model which has been suggested to adopt with the
development initiatives in rural development. The purpose of
this chapter is to examine the participatory model projected
by Chambers for ensuring the participation of the local
community in the decision making process in the
development programs. This work compounds with the
qualitative discussion using secondary sources. This chapter
highlighted the brief introduction about Chambers, and
emphasized his participatory mechanism in a comprehensive
manner. Chambers argued that poor people or marginalized
rural communities are excluded in all spheres, and they are
normally in the least social, political and economic position
particularly in the rural areas. Moreover, Chambers claimed
that rural poor have been given poor attention and less
priority to take decisions in the development project

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implemented by the government or donor agencies before and

after 1960s and 1970s. The major decisions have been taken
by the outsiders rather than local poor and marginalized
communities. Thus, Chambers suggested a participatory
approach (bring people from last to first) in the decision
making process at all stages of the development activities.
This concept is a major contribution to the field of sociology,
public health, agriculture, development, and other relevant
disciplines to assess the bottom-up approach in the
development plans, and to suggest policymakers to adapt
participatory models in the development exercises, to ensure
success of the particular development projects.
Keywords: Robert Chambers; Participatory Model; Rural
Development; Putting People First; Putting the Last First;
RRA; PRA.
Introduction
The participatory approach was introduced and suggested by
many scholars as a useful mechanism to overcome the
development challenges. Michael Cernea and Robert
Chambers are more popular figures in constructing the
participatory models (Riswan, 2020: 658) in terms of
community participation in the development activities,
particularly in the rural development. Chambers lived and
worked in the key areas of rural development and rural
poverty in Asia and Africa (Rajendra, 2016; Matunhu, 2011).
Chambers’ famous book titled Rural Development: Putting
the Last First (published in 1983) is not only an ideology to
introduce a concept but it has been produced as a primary
application or model which is professional in nature, that can

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be executed by the academics and researchers, and also

adopted and exercised by the practitioners as well. This book
has been given more popularity to Chambers. It is a useful
tool for working directly or indirectly with rural poverty
reduction and rural development.
Chambers paves a positive look on the issues of rural poverty
but it gives a critical role for ‘professionals’. His focus is on
‘outsiders’ who prepare and design the projects for rural
development. To explain rural poverty and rural
development, Chambers shows many examples from Asia,
Africa and South of the Sahara for making the possibilities of
action(Wilmore, 1986; Duncan, 1989; Matunhu, 2011). These
possibilities are associated with his book which focused on
the professionals, their attitude, way of working and their
intervention with rural people, rural elite and political system.
He calls for strong commitment from professionals whose
values are geared for putting the ‘last first’ by learning from
rural poor, listening from local people (Rajendra, 2016;
Wilmore, 1986), promoting the development through
decision making of local poor, building capacity of these
vulnerable and powerless groups for appraising their own
problems and acting on them (Wilmore, 1986).
In this background, this chapter aims to underline the
participatory approach of Robert Chambers, and to evaluate
the basic elements of ‘putting the last first’ idea which was
established by him. It also focuses on examining how
participatory models have been adopted with rural
development initiatives. This is a qualitative work gathered
secondary data from various sources including books, review
articles and journal papers. The major discussion on the

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evaluation of the participatory approach has been presented in

the chapter in an interpretative way.

Biography of Robert Chambers

Robert Chambers was born on May 1, 1932 in a middle class
family in Cirencester, England, who is a well-known British
academician and development practitioner. His academic
work is associated with an Institute of Development Studies
(IDS) at the University of Sussex. He graduated (1 st History)
in 1955 and was attached with the Gough Island Scientific
Survey for the British Government in 1956. He failed to
accomplish his PhD in history at the University of
Pennsylvania. In 1958 he joined the HM Overseas Civil
Service in Kenya, working in Maralal from 1958-1960.
Before and after Independence he lectured at the Kenya
Institute of Administration and the East Africa Staff College,
returning to Britain in 1966 where he lectured at the
University of Manchester and completed his PhD degree in
1967 at the University of Manchester (Biekart& Gasper,
2013).He worked as academician at the University of
Glasgow from 1967, and in the University of Nairobi from
1969. Chamber joined the IDS, University of Sussex in
1972 (IDS Bulletin - Web Source).
He had lengthily served to Kenya, India and other
countries during the time at the IDS. Chambers obtained
honorary fellow of the International Institute of Social
Studies in 2013. (Biekart& Gasper, 2013; Chambers,
2020). However, he contributed and advocated as one of the
pioneers to establish participatory approach in the rural
development process especially in the developing countries in

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Asia and Africa. Chambers became involved with the

development field in the 1970s, and has become author of
numerous books and worked as editor and co-editor of many
other books which mostly covered land and resettlement
challenges in Africa and, more extensively, associated with
rural development plans in Africa and Asia. Specifically he
worked as an administrator, trainer and researcher mostly in
Africa (Kenya) for more than ten years.
During his term, he focused on irrigation and agrarian
issues, and then participatory approaches and methods to
execute research activities in the rural development programs.
Chambers has worked in and with training institutes (Kenya
Institute of Administration, East African Staff College,
Administrative Staff College of India), research organizations
(IIED), universities (IDS Sussex and IDS Nairobi), civil
society (ActionAid and the Ford Foundation) and
governmental and intergovernmental organizations
(Government of Kenya and UNHCR) in Kenya (Wilmore,
1986; Biekart& Gasper, 2013) which shows his tremendous
contribution in the area of rural development and other
projects and assessments connected to participatory
appraisals.

Major Works of Chambers

Numerous contribution made by Chambers through

publications of books and other scholarly work; such
as,Settlement Schemes in Tropical Africa: a study of
organizations and development (1969); The Volta
Resettlement Experience (1970); MWEA: An Irrigated Rice
Settlement Scheme in Kenya (with Moris, J., 1973); Rural

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Development in Botswana (1974); Managing Rural

Development: ideas and experiences from East Africa (1974);
Botswana’s Accelerated Rural Development Program 1973-
1976 (1977); Seasonal Dimensions to Rural Poverty (with R.
Longhurst and A. Pacey [eds.], 1981); Rural Development:
Putting the Last First (1983); Managing canal irrigation:
practical analysis from South Asia (1988); To the hands of
the poor: water and trees (with N.C. Saxena and T. Shah,
1989); Farmer First: farmer innovation and agricultural
research (with A. Pacey and L.A. Thupp [eds.], 1989);
Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the
21st Century (with G.R. Conway, 1991); Challenging the
Professions: frontiers for rural development (1993); Whose
Reality Counts: Putting the First Last (1997); Global
synthesis: consultations with the poor (D. Narayan, N. Shah
and P. Petesch, 1999); Participatory Workshops: a
sourcebook of 21 sets of ideas and activities (2002); Ideas for
Development (2005); Revolutions in Development Inquiry
(2008); Handbook of Community-led total Sanitation (with
K. Kar, 2008); Provocations for Development (2010); Into
the Unknown: Explorations in Development Practice (2014);
and,Can We Know Better?: Reflections for Development
(2017) (Robert Chambers google scholar; Robert Chambers
Achieve & Web Source).

Evaluation on Participatory Approach

Chambers recognizes a set of participatory tools for gathering
social information from local communities in the rural
sectors. He emphasizes the exercise of rapid assessment
procedures as a major tool during and after 1980s in various
developed and developing regions. Further, Chambers

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describes numerous forms of applications and forms of direct

observations and approaches such as; key informants, group
interview, chain interview, ethno-histories, mapping and
diagramming, aerial photographs, ranking procedures, stories
and portraits, and review of secondary data, and so on.
(Cernea 1985: 514).
This is a set of ideas that the rural poor can
interconnect when exercising appraisal themselves are the
most knowledgeable but they are often ignored for collecting
information on rural problems and activities. Thus, Chambers
proposes participatory appraisal (Rapid Rural Appraisal -
RRA) for collecting actual and accurate socio-cultural data
rapidly from rural areas by the professionals or outsiders. So
that professionals can investigate the rural problems using
these approaches and make a social analysis which is a much
more practical and feasible method in every development
plan. When putting rural poor first, social information plays a
pivotal role, and it is a useful tool to learn from local people
and understand their necessities and urgencies and find out
the impacts of social, economic and cultural settings. So this
participatory approach and methods of gathering data is
critical, but it is often neglected or poorly applied in the early
decades (Chambers, 1985:515-516).
Generally, in the rural development plans and in the
professional practices especially during 1960s and 1970s four
major shortcomings found in the process of generating,
analyzing, and using social information in rural
development. (1) Things have come before people: the
government organizations and funding agencies have been
influenced by the outsiders namely; engineers, economists

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and statisticians who mainly considered the things with the

physical and with the figures, rather than that of its social
dimensions. The local communities were counted inthe
justification of the project, but did not listen and learn from
the poor. For instant; the road construction and building
construction, people and professions or subject experts like
sociologist, anthropologist, agricultural experts and others
who have poor intervention with projects and, the social
scientist invited latterly to the concerned projects, even
though all elements of the projects deal with the ‘people’s
problems’. So people (poorer people) have come
last. (2) Poor people were neglected or ignored: the local
people excluded, voiceless and powerless, and their
requirements and expectations have been low in the
development plan. They are the least accessible to outsiders,
least organized and least articulated. If people have come last,
the poorer have come least of all. (3) Traditional ways of
social intervention have regularly not been cost-effective:
outsiders required information timely, accurately, relevantly
and usable. The data collection was carried out in the rural
development process in different issues such as, late,
irrelevant, wrong, and unusable and cost for obtaining,
analyzing and summarizing. The social information often
identified as useless, delay, inaccuracy and out-of-date or
misleading. (4) Social information was obtained, owned and
evaluated mostly or only by outsiders: But the knowledge is
not theirs, it is the knowledge of local people (poorer). The
knowledge of rural people must be counted and articulated.
The data generation must be carried out with the participation
of local people. The empowerment and sustainability of

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development have close association with rural people who

generate and produce their own knowledge, which was not
included in the schedule of early development interventions
(Cernea, 1985; Chambers, 1985: 516-517).
Therefore, Chambers argues that most of the
participatory methods considered the outsiders influence to
learn from, and sometimes with, rural people. So,
participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was widely accepted in
the development arena in the later part of 1970s and 1980s,
and in the early 1990s significantly in the developing and
developed countries, particularly in the rural development
initiatives. The RRA presented by Chambers, though, is
primarily extractive. This extractive method is useful when
outsiders collect the data to prepare, identify, appraise,
monitor and assess some sort of development schemes. But
social knowledge has to be generated mostly through
participatory models in which the assessment and
investigation are undertaken mostly by the rural people
themselves, then the rural poor own their knowledge and
articulate their own needs and priorities.
PRA was drawn and overlapped with other sets of
participatory families. And it has been recognized and
adopted by RRA techniques in a participatory manner. The
PRA enables rural people (poorer) to exercise their own
appraisal(Chambers, 1994 & 1985). In the recent
development processes, participatory approaches are used in
community development, natural resource management
projects, water and sanitation projects, irrigation and dam
projects in many countries including Kenya, India and Sri
Lanka. PRA is a powerful method and a new way for

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establishing rapport with local people (direct beneficiaries of

the projects) to make changes through participatory mapping
and modelling, transect walking, social mapping, trend
analysis, seasonal diagramming, and identification of rural
problems and opportunities, mostly by the local people (real
beneficiaries) themselves in the rural sector (Cernea, 1985).
Chambers claimed that the government departments
and development organizations should take action to support
local people in order to empower poor people and enable
them to do the work to meet their demand and requirements.
This attempt positively helps the stakeholders for putting
people first and for putting poorer people first of all. These
efforts promote all institutions to be strengthened and
sustainable toward development policy and practices. The
participatory rural appraisal has become one of the entry
points among other methods. In the late 1980s, the PRA
became a more recognized model than a decade earlier
(Simon, 2006). Subsequently, this participatory method
(PRA) theoretically accepted and that has been translated into
more practical and systematic action, and established as a
more professional approach in government authorities,
universities, among donor countries or funding agencies, and
in other non-governmental organizations for the purpose of
putting people before things, learning from rural people and
generating data from rural people, rather than teaching them
(Chambers, 1985: 533).
Putting people first or putting the last first is not just
employed by the social scientists alone, but it is the
responsibility of a whole range of disciplines. This
participatory appraisal can be adopted and exercised by all

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stakeholders of the development program. The participatory

approaches have been recognized more and more by the
international organizations like World Bank and countries in
the 1990s very extensively. Latterly, the participatory models
have become better insight now than before. So, Chambers
determines that ‘putting people first and putting the poorer
first of all’ is now more than ever a matter of personal and
professional choice and commitment (Chambers, 1985:533).

Conclusion
The rural people are given less priority in politics, economic
and social conditions. They are more vulnerable to many
rural challenges, as a result they do not have political power,
they are a voiceless and silent group to take decisions and ask
questions to the government or donor agencies or outsiders
who are directly involved in the appraisal of rural
development process. Thus, Chambers argued that if rural
people are last, the poorer people in the least of all. So, the
local people (including poorer) must be taken into first in the
development process including preparation, planning,
implementation, monitoring, and evaluation spheres of the
development initiatives. This chapter comprehensively
evaluated the participatory approach and models introduced
by Robert Chambers. His participatory mechanism covers
RRA and PRA as more suitable models for exercising in the
field in order to enhance the rural people to participate in the
decision making process of their own appraisal in their own
place, through their own local knowledge and expertise. This
chapter stated the participatory ideology of Chambers that
bringing poorer or marginalized people from last to first

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become a more useful model (Chambers, 1997:11) to

promote empowerment among local people and ensure the
sustainability of the development projects.
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Cernea M.M. (1985). Putting People First: Sociological

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Chambers, R. (1985). ‘Shortcut and Participatory Methods

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Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of

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ISBN:978-81-955229-5-8 Page 26

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