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Fifth Social Development Research Capacity Building (SDRC)

for Academia, Government, NGOs and Researchers

Date: July 26 - August 10, 2007

Tata-Dhan Academy invites applications from interested candidates of established research institutions,
Government departments and NGOs for the programme. The fifth programme on Social Development Research Capacity Building (SDRC) will be conducted at Tata-Dhan Academy, Madurai, India. The Programme was designed and initiated in collaboration with the University of Wales, University of London and DFID, and has been successfully conducted for four times. Tata-Dhan Academy is an educational institution promoted by DHAN Foundation with the support of Sir Ratan Tata Trust.

Current Scenario in Social Development Research

The pool of social development research expertise in general remains stagnant and becoming smaller in relation to the demand in South Asia. On one hand there is a lack of demand for quality social development research and on the other, when there is demand there is a dearth of organisations to provide relevant and quality inputs through research. The result is that between policy research and academic research, important policy questions often get overlooked. The academicians are disengaged from the study of innovations at the grassroots, while development-oriented researchers are isolated from creative and critical intellectual currents. Today there is a demand for social development research, which is accessible and relevant to local interests.

Policy Relevance and Decentralisation

The need for research capacity at state and local level stems, in particular, from recent policy shifts towards decentralisation and community based approaches to development in different sectors. Civil society institutions at local level have a new importance in development planning, implementation and monitoring. This means that the demand for local research capacity with professional skills will increase particularly from local civil society institutions such as NGOs, elected local councils and non-profit agencies. The limited experience so far suggests that achieving 'downward accountability' of social research depends crucially upon a history of effective partnership between researchers, local NGOs and people. It also requires effective presentation of results (which NGOs often lack), perhaps using the media and policy makers responsive to information and policy recommendations.

Donor Support for Social Development Research

The links between research and policy are potentially better within international donor agencies, for example, DFID, Ford Foundation, Oxfam, Action Aid, Novib etc. These bodies have supported social
research on broad themes such as structural adjustment, poverty alleviation, and rural livelihood systems. However, a very significant part of this research has been strongly geared towards internal programme / agency concerns. Most donor agencies perceive quality social research as scarce. Also their links are weak with the existing research institutions. Hence there is a dependence on consultants coming outside of the organisations to carry out such required researches.

Tata-Dhan Academy and the Social Research Programmes

Tata-Dhan Academy aims at training development professionals through its various programmes and research. Some of the themes so far undertaken in research are small-scale water resource systems, sustainable farm livelihoods, non-farm livelihoods and microfinance. The field and research experience of DHAN Foundation is available to Tata-Dhan Academy and the participants of its programmes. The experiences of over a decade in working at the grassroots through its two thematic programmes – Community Banking Programme and Tank fed Agriculture Development Programme will provide sufficient backgrounds for the participants.

SDRC Programme

The programme generally aims at establishing training and capacity development for grassroots NGO professionals and applied researchers working in development programs.

The specific objectives are

• Creating awareness and access to new knowledge to the participants for taking up applied social research
• Providing an opportunity to learn innovative research methods in order to improve their conceptualisation and implementation abilities.
• The guiding principle for this programme design is to provide advance learning in terms of knowledge enhancement and skill orientation to the participants on the emerging challenges and issues in the field of development for applied social research.

The programme has two major components

1. Changing global contexts for development
2. New frontiers in social research methods

I. Changing global context for development

This component is divided into three different modules

• Poverty and Inequality
• Environment and Development
• Globalisation and Development

Poverty and Inequality

It has been increasingly accepted that poverty and inequality are multi-dimensional in nature. Various methods have been developed to identify and estimate the poor at different points of time across the world. Moreover, different measures have also been taken to address poverty and reduce inequality. But poverty and inequality continues to be one of the important concerns all over the globe especially in third world countries like India. This module aims at building perspectives on global deprivation and
disparity. This includes sessions on understanding poverty, measurement of poverty and inequality, concept of human development and methods of calculating human development indices.

Environment and Development

It has become commonly understood that environment is an integral part of life. But it has also been understood that the market driven economic activities cannot be sustainable either because they will have destroyed the environmental conditions necessary for that sustainability, or because their environmental effects will cause huge damage to human life. Besides, the national income accounting system does not consider the environmental cost of any development. This module deals with natural resources, environment and sustainable development. This includes sessions on issues and challenges of natural resources with specific emphasis on water, forest and fisheries, biodiversity concerns, and urban environment & problems.

Globalisation and Development

Liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation have brought a lot of macroeconomic changes in terms of economic growth, foreign trade and foreign currency reserve. At the same time livelihood condition of a section of population especially who are dependent on traditional caste-based occupation has been marginalised. Moreover, the free flow of capital across the world has induced over exploitation of natural resources and consequent climate change. Besides, one can find a lot of socio-cultural changes during this
arena of globalisation. This module aims at enhancing knowledge on aspects of globalisation and its impact on development with specific focus on livelihoods and natural resources. It also includes topics on globalisation and trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), globalisation and social change, and globalisation and climate change.

All the above three modules include emerging theories and models, international treaties, conventions for development, use of modern technologies in local resource management and monitoring, and gender dimensions as cross cutting areas.

II. New frontiers in social research methods

This component specifically aims at exposing the participants to various innovative social research methods with emphasis on knowledge and skill orientation. This includes social capital measurement, social auditing, social impact assessment, contingency planning for disaster risk reduction, community action planning: micro planning for panchayats and urban slums, uses of GIS and participatory learning methods for applied social research. This module also includes three days of field practice to learn the application of various tools and techniques of participatory learning methods.

Participants

Participants include

• Development Professionals holding middle and senior level positions and involved in programme/project implementation, monitoring and evaluation in growing organisations working on Water, Forests, Agriculture, Microfinance, Panchayats and Rural development sectors.
• Researchers pursuing or completed their Ph.D. in the field of rural & urban development
• Project Managers from Government and donor agencies who are directly or indirectly associated with the implementation of development programme / projects.

Interested candidates for this programme must have basic knowledge on social science research. The earlier participants included researchers from Institutes of Development studies, Agricultural Universities, NGO staff involved in monitoring and evaluation, management information systems and project
managers working in large bilateral and multilateral projects.

Faculty

• The programme faculty consists of Invited scholars with seminal contributions
• Faculty and senior staff from Tata-Dhan Academy and DHAN Foundation
• Development leaders and practitioners with contribution to Social Development

Venue

The programme, being completely residential will be held at Tata-Dhan Academy campus in Pulloothu, 12 Kms from Madurai. The campus is set in a serene environment at the foot hills of Nagamalai, which is conducive for learning. The campus is well equipped with class rooms, a library, a computer lab etc and recreation facility like sports complex.

Fee and Sponsorship

The total programme fee is Rs 20,000 per participant which covers tuition, course materials, board & lodging. The Academy will facilitate sponsorship to cover fifty percent of the programme fee to the deserving candidates on request. Admission to the programme will be intimated to the candidates within a week of receipt of application.

Brochure and application can be downloaded from our website www.dhan.org. The fee shall be sent through a Demand Draft in favour of Tata-Dhan Academy, Madurai along with completed applications. Last date for receiving applications is July 15, 2007.

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