In policy circles, references to youth in North-East India typically evoke an ambivalent response – from an acknowledgement of the enduring legacy of conflict and high levels of unemployment, resultant outmigration to an untapped potential waiting to be uncovered and integrated into the upward ‘development’ trajectory of the country.
Confronted with relatively high literacy rates not translating to jobs, a recent spurt of skill development initiatives focused on youth has sought to address the skills deficit and bridge the education-to-employment gap. Industrial Training Institutes, for instance, provide formal skills training in various trades – from craftsmanship to plumbing.
Central schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana have focused on training youth in ‘future-ready’ skills with the prospect of employment opportunities.
These training-based modules comprise a predefined course structure with a clear outcome of achieving proficiency in a particular skill, akin to experiences with traditional education – where students complete a specified syllabus in a setting with little room to explore multiple interests and undertake interdisciplinary learning. Parallely, while policy discourse has shifted towards an emphasis on 21st-century skills such as creativity, interdisciplinarity, critical thinking and imagination to deal with increasingly complex challenges, the incorporation of these aspects to training-based modules seems to have so far eluded its design.
Moreover, a mentality of segregation based on technical skills as a ticket to secure employment and 21st-century skills as a good-to-have seemed to have seeped into initiatives. But, what if it were possible to integrate these seemingly disparate concepts?
Acknowledging the skills gap, more broadly defined as technical and 21st-century skills, the Chief Minister’s Youth Centre (CMYC) Programme, an initiative of the Government of Meghalaya supported by Sauramandala Foundation, Project DEFY, and Smart Village Movement, sought to provide holistic learning and skilling opportunities to youth in rural Meghalaya.
Learning is interest-driven in CMYCs and approached through an interdisciplinary lens with three components in each centre – a community learning space (called a Nook), a library and sports (from ultimate frisbee to football and chess). Instead of a predefined outcome, the learner experiments with various domains and skills before identifying their interest in a project area and engages in daily discussion circles with other learners to build a sense of community, social awareness and empathy.
Learners are not ‘trained’ in these project areas, but rather rely on knowledge sources – from the internet to peers to build their understanding in a flexible environment through an approach known as ‘self-designed-learning.’ At present, government support for CMYCs have resulted in the scale-up of the programme to 22 centres across 8 districts in rural Meghalaya.
Distribution of CMYCs in Meghalaya. Source: CMYC | Sauramandala
Participatory research as a tool to co-create insights
While the CMYC model intends on providing learning and skilling opportunities to youth in rural Meghalaya, how do we know that the programme has so far enabled learners to understand and build on their potential in their chosen areas?
In addition to routine monitoring and evaluation of project outcomes such as registrations, learner attendance, attrition, and project areas completed, among other indicators, research is often a complementary tool to understand participants’ insights, and how the programme impacts the community.
Research, however, is not a monolithic idea and comprises various approaches and theories that drive the design of a study. More importantly, how one collects data and insights speaks to the larger thinking behind how learners and communities are viewed concerning the programme.
In research within NGO programmes, it is common to find largely extractive top-down data collection strategies where participants have little to no say over the research process. Beyond demonstrating ‘evidence’ that the programme is successful, the question about whether the data collected is meaningful for the communities involved is rarely factored in the design of studies.
Participatory approaches to research aim to equalise this imbalance and power asymmetry between the researcher and ‘researched’ and provide a platform for participants to inform the data and insights derived from the research process.
These approaches position research as a learning experience – where insights are co-created throughout the process, and not simply through ‘findings’ parked at the end of research reports intended for specialised audiences.
Localised action through participatory research in rural Meghalaya
While insights from the North-East have become more prominent through digital media and research, there continues to be an underrepresentation of research that speaks to the experiences of communities in remote locations within the North-East. Scholars, practitioners, and media tend to be concentrated in urban pockets such as Guwahati and Shillong and the insights of rural demographics are not adequately captured in discourses that seek to provide solutions to challenges ranging from the skills deficit to agricultural productivity.
Similar to other North-Eastern states, Meghalaya’s population continues to be largely rural and disconnected from the pace of growth seen in urban Shillong or Tura. Given the urban-rural disparity of opportunity and resources, providing platforms for rural youth to voice their aspirations becomes all the more important.
Participatory research is a powerful tool to ensure that these voices are adequately represented and find their way to policy circles in the state and beyond.
To this end, Project DEFY, in collaboration with partners in the CMYC programme, released a paper titled, ‘Co-creating Pathways to Transform Communities in Rural Meghalaya, India: A study on the Chief Minister’s Youth Centre (CMYC) programme.’ The study utilised participatory approaches to understand how CMYCs had addressed challenges and aspirations of learners and communities in rural Meghalaya, and how the programme could factor these insights in its design.
Through the research methods, learners and community members created actionable insights that factored in their unique contexts. For instance, village mapping was used to build context and capture the availability of local resources. In contrast, most research studies rely on secondary literature and data to introduce the context and socio-economic profile of study locations.
In this paper, mapping the village and collecting local resources as part of building the context allowed learners to look at the availability and functionality of resources within their villages.
These insights, among those drawn from other research activities, led to the creation of action plans around how the CMYC could serve as a platform to utilise locally available resources and tackle challenges in the village identified by learners themselves.
Village mapping underway in Rongsak Songma, East Garo Hills. In groups, CMYC learners walk around their village to capture the availability of basic services and local resources.
Navigating uncertainty: The barriers to participatory research in Meghalaya
While representation and agency of communities in CMYC locations were the ideas driving our research, conducting field-based research comes with certain challenges accentuated in relatively remote parts of the state. These range from the terrain, and gendered nature of accessibility, to climatic conditions and the increasing uncertainty of landslides or heavy rainfall which make research more difficult in disconnected areas. In addition to structural and infrastructure-related challenges, participatory research deems a consideration of the power dynamics within the community. Even within remote communities, all voices do not hold equal sway in informing day-to-day community dynamics. Ideals of representation can only be realised if diverse community members are provided a platform to come together and have an equal say through the research process. In the next part of the series, we build on our approach to some of the challenges we encountered – from geography to power relations and barriers to co-creating insights through participatory research. Ultimately, through this series, we wish to share our experiences and provide a roadmap to researchers across the North-East who are looking to make their research studies more inclusive, representative and relevant for communities and policy-makers.
Anoushka Gupta is the Research Lead at Project DEFY, a Bangalore-based non profit that conceptualised the Nook model with partners across India, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Mintioneth Fancon is the Subject Matter Expert in Self Designed Learning for the Chief Minister Youth Centres in Meghalaya.
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