Overcoming barriers to social inclusion in agricultural intensification: reflections on a transdisciplinary community development project from India and Bangladesh

Abstract

We describe a research-for-development (R4D) strategy developed to address how investments and interventions in agricultural intensification as a means to achieve community development can be designed to be more socially inclusive and equitable. We draw on results from a 5-year project – Promoting socially inclusive and sustainable agricultural intensification in West Bengal (India) and southern Bangladesh (SIAGI). We reflect on a major pivot in the project’s strategy, from being primarily research-driven to placing community concerns and priorities at the centre with a shift towards Ethical Community Engagement (ECE). This became the foundational framework which guided the definition and undertaking of all subsequent activities – including a rethink of methods and concepts to develop tools and frameworks fit for purpose and local context, and inculcating a culture of reflexivity and mutual learning in the project. We show that creating the conditions for true participation, where project beneficiaries and non-government organizations are equal partners alongside researchers and government actors, and for co-learning using the ECE framework, sets the foundations for increased and potentially enduring social inclusion in agricultural intensification.

Introduction

Sustainable agricultural intensification is generally seen as a strategy to meet the multiple and interrelated challenges of food security, climate adaptation and poverty alleviation (Garnett et al., 2013). Intensification of agriculture has resulted in increased food production over the past 50 years (International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD], 2010). While this achievement has helped alleviate poverty, in low- and middle-income country contexts it has also contributed to increased disparity between affluent landholders and disadvantaged groups such as marginal smallholders, women-headed households (HHs), and tribal minorities. At the community level, affluent landholders are generally in a stronger position to capture the benefits of agricultural intensification (Jayaraman and Lanjouw, 1999; Brown and Kennedy, 2005). Affluence in this context is not necessarily restricted to size or ownership of land, but is understood as those better positioned to access and deploy various capitals, including knowledge, labour and new technology. Sources of inequity in rural communities can also arise out of formal and informal institutions, power relations, caste, class, ethnic background or gender (Wong, 2013).

The Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP), spanning eastern India, the Terai of Nepal, and large parts of Southwest Bangladesh, are regarded as having underutilized potential for agricultural intensification to generate significant increases in food production and provide opportunities to alleviate poverty (Singh et al., 2015). However, there is a high risk that marginalized HHs in these regions will either miss out on such opportunities, or be negatively affected by these processes.

Marginalized farmers tend to be more vulnerable to crop losses (Brown et al., 2018) and therefore may be reluctant or unable to take on risks brought by experimenting and investing in intensified agriculture. This is especially so for those who lack access to land or a secure tenure. Therefore, the promotion of irrigation practices for intensification and drought mitigation in the EGP may exacerbate social exclusion despite being technically feasible (Sugden, 2014).

Agricultural intensification is often linked to land use change and farm consolidation, which can result in displacement and loss of livelihoods for marginal groups. The transformation of rice paddy land into shrimp farms in coastal southwestern Bangladesh, for example, has led to many landless people losing grazing opportunities (Afroz et al., 2017) and displaced rice farmers due to soil salinization. Proposed measures to protect against these types of risk requires changes in institutional arrangements, for example, to enable more equitable water access (Sugden et al., 2015), and to collectively manage water for multiple land uses (International Water Management Institute [IWMI], 2014). However, facilitating such change is difficult as it requires reallocation of resources and power.

Against this backdrop, the question arises: how can research-led investments and interventions in community development, based on agricultural intensification, be designed to be more socially inclusive and equitable? Specifically, what research approaches could lead to increased social inclusion and a reduction in unintended consequences of agricultural intensification?

In this article, we describe a community development strategy developed to help address these questions and reflect on the challenges and effectiveness of the approach taken and the methods used. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s (1970) vision of community development as practice in dialogue, humility and empathy, we set out to instil these core principles in our development of the ethical community engagement (ECE) framework. The framework ultimately informed the way we carried out the research, engaged with communities, and worked together as researchers and practitioners. We conclude the paper by reflecting on how these learnings can help improve the design and implementation of interventions aimed at achieving greater social inclusion.

We draw on the results of a 5-year project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) implemented in West Bengal (India) and Southwest Bangladesh. This project – Promoting socially inclusive and sustainable agricultural intensification in West Bengal and southern Bangladesh (SIAGI), consisted of a partnership between Australian, Indian and Bangladesh research institutions, NGOs working in the study areas, and community groups in six villages in three case study locations.

General study design

The project was co-designed by all formal project partners, and a schematic of the original study design is provided in Figure 1. The main research component comprised the integration of social, institutional and market situational analyses with risk assessment and scenario analysis, and new practices to promote agricultural intensification. Given the complex nature of the research question, the project comprised an interdisciplinary team and aspired to operate in a transdisciplinary mode by including NGOs and community groups (as equal partners in the research.

Figure 1

Original SIAGI project framework [VHs = vulnerable households, comprising marginal and small landholders (MLs) and women headed households (WHHs)].

The long-term goal of SIAGI was to support community development through more resilient livelihoods, increased income, and improved health and nutrition for vulnerable and marginalized HHs. Four impact pathways (IPs) as shown in Figure 1 were developed to articulate how the project would contribute to this goal. The project did not conduct research on options for agricultural intensification per se. Information on appropriate new practices and technologies was accessed through close partnership with other ACIAR projects working in the same locations as the SIAGI project.

In our use of the terms ‘marginalized’ and ‘vulnerable’, we applied combined definitions from human rights, development studies, research ethics and international health scholarship, whereby marginalized groups are broadly those who are socially excluded, typically as a result of vulnerability. Marginalization and vulnerability intersect with poverty in multiple ways including institutional (for example, gender inequality), individual (for example, psychosocial impacts) and economic (for example, livelihood prospects) (von Braun and Gatzweiler, 2013).

Case study sites

Six villages in West Bengal and SW Bangladesh were invited to participate in the project. These regions continue to be targeted by international donors as regions with underutilized agricultural development potential, receiving substantial government and donor support for agricultural intensification, and were prescribed by the donor. The key characteristics of the case study sites are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1

Summary characteristics of case study sites

Agroecological zones	Socio-ecological settings (village)
1. Eastern Gangetic alluvial plains, high rainfall, northern West Bengal Primary agricultural intensification opportunity consists in developing tube well-based irrigation to	1.1 Caste-based communities; some moderate dry season cropping; predominantly small and marginal farming HHs (Dhaloguri)
enable dry season cropping. Location: Cooch Behar (1.1) and Alipurduar (1.2) districts. Linked ACIAR project: Dry season irrigation by marginal and tenant farmers in the EGP.	1.2 Tribal communities; very little dry season cropping; predominantly small and marginal farming HHs (Uttar Chakowakheti)
2. Northern hills of the East India Plateau, southern West Bengal Primary agricultural intensification opportunity consists in developing rainwater harvesting and	2.1 Tribal communities; no dry season cropping; predominantly marginal farming HHs with high levels of food insecurity; socially more cohesive (Chakadoba)
storage facilities to enable dry season irrigated production of high value crops. Location: Bankura district. Linked ACIAR project: Improving livelihoods on the East India Plateau.	2.2 Tribal communities; no dry season cropping; predominantly marginal farming HHs with high levels of food insecurity; socially less cohesive (Hakimsinan)
3. Coastal zone, southwest and central south Bangladesh Primary agricultural intensification opportunity consists in storing fresh river water in re-excavated drainage canals or by blocking ingress of brackish	3.1 Farming and shrimp growing communities; moderate to strongly affected by salinity; no dry season cropping; conflicts between small/marginal and large landholders (Khatail)
water in canals, to enable irrigated dry season cropping of high value crops. Location: Dacope (3.1) and Amtali (3.2) upazilas (subdistricts). Linked ACIAR project: Cropping systems intensification in the coastal zone of West Bengal and Bangladesh.	3.2 Mixed farming communities; marginally affected by salinity; limited dry season cropping (Sekendarkhali)

In West Bengal, our NGO partners drew on existing relationships with communities in the case study villages and we built on existing community-based groups [farmer groups centred around tubewell-based irrigation collectives in northern West Bengal in Coochbehar and Alipurduar; and women-led self-help groups (SHGs) in Bankura]. In the two Bangladesh villages new community-based groups were established [water user associations (WUAs) and groups; and women-led farmer groups]. In all villages, consolidation or establishment of the groups constituted an intervention in its own right, and the type of groups set up varied according to context and needs in each village.

Initial implementation

The SIAGI project commenced in April 2016 with an inception workshop involving all (>30) team members. The workshop reaffirmed the project’s theory of change and IPs developed during the design phase, and supplemented it with a log frame to operationalize activities and clarify team member roles.

The first phase of the project focused on the NGO partners consolidating or forming farmer groups with marginalized segments of the communities in the case study villages in an effort to strengthen informal institutions. At the same time the research teams were intent on collecting primary data required for the situational analysis and to feed into the various planned models and tools.

Acquisition of primary data was mainly oriented towards meeting the needs of the researchers who were gearing up to use a suite of pre-established, mostly quantitative and survey-based methods and models. It soon transpired that these methods were likely to be highly extractive, risked demanding excessive time inputs from participating HHs, and did not allow for two-way dialogue. Community participants were unlikely to be asked what questions were important to them, nor what they wanted to know from the researchers. Rather, the questions posed were researcher driven. This was at odds with the project’s aspiration to foster social inclusion.

This tension was compounded by an unintended dichotomization of roles between NGO and research partners. In part this resulted from traditional perceptions that researchers are the subject matter experts, and the NGO’s role was to facilitate community mobilization (some initial perceptions went as far as to assume the mobilization was to fulfil the researchers’ data needs!). At the initial stage of the study, sometimes lack of coordination between the NGOs and researchers, and poor planning and last-minute requests made by researchers for access to the communities were sources of tension. It became clear that there was a mutual lack of experience and understanding of how the two parties could work together productively and respectfully. More importantly, the community members participating in the project were caught in the middle, on the one hand at risk of having to sit through onerous surveys, and on the other hand to work with the NGOs and articulate their needs and aspirations, with a promise of change which might not be fulfilled. The possibility of meaningful collaboration and true empowerment within the community was thus partial at best.

In short, at the first 6-monthly review point, the project team realized that (i) there was a mismatch between practices of local research partners and the transdisciplinary aspiration injected by the Australian lead organization, (ii) many of the selected research methods were not fit for purpose, (iii) the general premise that only NGOs do the engagement with community was flawed, and (iv) the community empowerment dimension was at risk of being lost.

Reorientation

Once the SIAGI team became aware of the trajectory it was on, a decision was taken to pivot the project away from being primarily researcher-driven and to place community concerns and priorities at the centre of future activities. This pivot was facilitated by drawing on the deep experience the NGO partners had in working with marginalized segments of rural communities and by researchers relinquishing their primacy over knowledge. It entailed redirecting significant effort into a suite of awareness and training workshops to ground all partners in key theoretical concepts (for example, self-agency, empowerment – Bandura, 1977), as well as practical training in qualitative research methods, in which collaborating HHs became equal partners in the generation of knowledge.

The central concept that emerged from this process was a shift towards what we termed Ethical Community Engagement (ECE). This became the foundational framework which guided the definition and undertaking of all other activities – including a rethink of methods and concepts to develop more fit-for-purpose tools and frameworks, and inculcate a culture of reflexivity and a mutual learning process in the project.

Pivot to ethical community engagement

ECE is the approach used and refined in SIAGI to guide how NGOs, researchers, government and other development actors can partner with communities to support empowerment and inclusion in development processes. It builds on earlier work by Mishra (2016) and draws from our NGO partners’ experiences and practices in achieving social inclusion, resource mobilization and technology adoption in community development settings.

In operationalizing ECE within the context of a research project, SIAGI drew from a long history of participatory development research methodologies, which emerged in response to the failure of ‘top-down’ development approaches that prioritized and elevated ‘expert’ scientific knowledge over local knowledge (Chambers, 1994; Noström et al., 2020).

Our goal to facilitate community development outcomes via the development of an ECE framework was strongly influenced by the vision, values and principles expressed in the works of two historical thinkers, Paulo Freire (1970) and Albert Bandura (1977). In the spirit of Freire, we challenged our own conceptualization of traditional researcher-researched relationships by repositioning the value of knowledge generated by our non-research partners (see Carter et al., 2022 for more detail). Similarly, Bandura offered clarity in how we viewed self-efficacy and empowerment in the context of sustainable livelihoods, essentially reshaping our formulation of indicators of success (see Tables 2–4 for further detail). We leaned heavily on the deep community development experience of our NGO partners to guide us in our interactions with the communities.

Table 2

Overview of development activities undertaken in the northern West Bengal case study sites and their outcomes in relation to empowerment and livelihoods

General project development activities

Key indicators for increased empowerment and livelihood outcomes (as at February 2021)

Formation and facilitation of collectives clustered around the establishment of shared shallow groundwater tube wells. Fostering establishment of new local level institutions and SHGs that empowered marginal HHs. Connecting community to government entitlements and market services.

Empowerment – SIAGI villages     647 farmers obtained caste certificates from district government, formally recognizing their identity and providing them with access to government entitlements. Leaders of the collectives leveraging district government support for the establishment of 19 additional shallow tube wells. Collective members establishing their own management and operational protocols for irrigation water use. Farmers/collectives accessing and jointly managing new technology such as green houses and solar pumps, and testing and growing new dry season crops. Sound financial management of the collectives improving financial bargaining power with banks and local agencies. Increased confidence for experimentation and risk, building on greater resilience to withstand unforeseen negative outcomes (e.g. crop failures). Livelihood impacts – SIAGI villages     171 marginal HHs in the project collectives achieved additional income ranging from US$355 to 445 from the production and sale of dry season crops (mustard, wheat, maize, potatoes) and high value crops (e.g. spinach and broccoli). Livelihood impacts – leveraged to other areas through partnership with Dept. of Agriculture and WBADMIP     Area of cultivation and other interventions beyond the project-instigated collectives has expanded by about 87 ha. Overall, 136 farming HHs in 14 additional collectives are using irrigation to produce a diversity of high value vegetable crops. 10 WUAs formerly set up under WBADMIP reactivated, helping groups of marginal farmers associated with the WUAs establish new irrigated, high value, dry season crops. It involved establishing new governance that enabled women to participate and curtail influence of elite farmers. A further 30 WUAs are undergoing similar change. Each re-established WUA on average comprises 45 HHs, of which 90 percent are marginal and/or women-led.

Table 3

Overview of development activities undertaken in the East India Plateau case study sites and their outcomes in relation to empowerment and livelihoods

General project development activities

Key indicators for increased empowerment and livelihood outcomes (as at February 2021)

Formation and facilitation of women SHGs to foster empowerment and self-agency, building on prior work by PRADAN funded through West Bengal Govt. watershed development programmes. Formation and facilitation of WUAs to create and manage irrigation assets (tanks etc.) built by the community. Connecting community to market services and introducing nutrition sensitive agriculture concepts.

Empowerment – SIAGI villages     SHGs developing their own land and water based natural resource management plans, prioritizing asset creation relevant and appropriate to their needs. SHGs establishing women-led WUAs with inclusive governance structures, resulting in development of equitable protocols for infrastructure management and access to water. Sound financial management and leadership of these WUAs resulted in funding being received directly from WBADMIP for planning and implementation of water infrastructure, instead of external contractors. Accessing and jointly managing new technology such as new cropping systems (orchards and cash crops), water harvesting and small-scale irrigation. HH food sufficiency increased from 3–6 to 9–12 months, with women reporting they no longer eat last. Empowerment – leveraged to Bankura, Jhargram and Purulia Districts through SIAGI partnership with WBADMIP and MGNREGS     WBADMIP has fundamentally changed how it engages with marginal HHs and women, implementing a new procurement guideline on prioritizing women for forming new WUAs across its investments in Bankura district. Funding through the MGNREGS leveraged to involve marginalized community members from >440 villages in the development of watershed development plans as piloted in the SIAGI villages. Issuance of revised Government of West Bengal guidelines for the establishment MGNREGS governance groups has institutionalized the involvement of women representatives from SHG institutions and Landless Job-card holders and their inclusion in the Project Monitoring Committees of MGNREGS. Livelihood impacts – SIAGI villages     130 HHs are accessing additional income through the direct commissioning of local SHG-led WUAs as service providers to create assets such as water harvesting structures and orchards. Livelihood impacts – leveraged to Bankura, Jhargram and Purulia Districts through SIAGI partnership with WBADMIP and MGNREGS     Diversification of diets and increase in income is occurring through expansion of irrigated Rabi season cereals, vegetables, legume growing on >14,000 ha, involving >78,000 marginal farming HHs.

Table 4

Overview of development activities undertaken in the SW Bangladesh case study sites and their outcomes in relation to empowerment and livelihoods

General project development activities

Key indicators for increased empowerment and livelihood outcomes (as at January 2021)

Formation and facilitation of women-led SHGs and farmer groups comprising marginal HHs. Formation and facilitation of Water and Silt Management Committees to re-excavate and manage canals for storage and allocation of irrigation water for Rabi cropping (Sekenderkhali only). Construction of dykes in canals to block ingress of brackish water. Connecting community to government, market services and private sector.

Empowerment – SIAGI villages     Development of WUG constitutions which ensure equal representation of women and marginal farmers to co-manage the water resources. Re-excavation of a silted canal for freshwater storage (Sekenderkhali) and construction of new dykes and sluice gates to stop ingress of brackish water (Sekenderkhali and Khatail), with communities including marginal HHs planning, co-investing in and conducting the infrastructure works. Engagement with and acquisition of approvals and co-investment for canal works from local government. Establishment of protocols for the collective use of natural resources, including the canal’s water and fish. Participatory crop planning for diversification into high value crops in the Rabi season. Increased confidence for experimentation and risk, building greater resilience to withstand unexpected outcomes (e.g. crop diversity). Leasing of land to women for crop production. Enhanced ability to resolve water conflicts, resulting in marginal HHs (majority of communities) retaining freshwater in canals for crop production and elite shrimp farmers not being allowed to open sluice gates for saltwater. Livelihood impacts – SIAGI villages     More equitable distribution of water from canals is providing 554 marginal farming HHs with access to irrigation water for Rabi season cropping to produce and market a diversity of crops achieving additional annual income ranging from US$20 to 1700. Livelihood impacts – leveraged to other regions in SW Bangladesh through partnership with other ACIAR projects and with CEIP     Area of cultivation and other interventions beyond the project instigated by WUGs and SHGs expanded by about 484 ha, e.g. through additional dykes to protect storage of fresh water. A further 69 water management organizations have been established based on ECE principles with funding from CEIP, engaging >27,000 farmers, >40 percent of whom are women.

Our conceptualization of ECE provides renewed attention to the importance of the process of engagement, especially for those often excluded. In accordance with Bandura (1977), ECE is the starting point from which engagement processes can instil confidence and self-esteem for greater agency and empowerment in marginalized individuals and communities. ECE enables the marginalized individuals to recognize deep-seated prejudices (and therefore barriers) to their own participation. Developing group processes [such as collectives, water user groups (WUGs) or SHGs] that seek to prevent exploitation through nurturing equitable procedures, governance and empathetic group leadership were some of the expected outcomes of applying an ECE approach. ECE provided us with a framework to maintain attention to the importance of process for engagement to create a set of conditions that enable participation. More details on the ECE framework, its principles and practices, and how it was developed and applied in SIAGI can be found in Carter et al. (2019, 2022).

Within the team’s new approach, data acquisition became as much an opportunity for community development through dialogue and mutual learning as it was for developing new research tools and conceptual frameworks. Given the greater reliance on qualitative methods, data were more in the form of narratives, anecdotes, testimonials and qualitative indicators. They were documented for subsequent synthesis and analysis in trip reports, bi-monthly partner reports, team workshop presentations and field notes. The conduct of the many focus group discussions followed ECE principles and became a shared activity between researchers and NGOs.

Embedding reflexivity and continuous learning

Concomitant with the pivot to ECE, SIAGI underwent a cultural shift to explicitly embed mutual learning as a core value and process. While two-way learning between researchers and NGOs in the project team, as well as between the team and collaborating community groups evolved to become a foundation of the project, a number of additional elements helped strengthen learning within the team. These comprised continually referring back to the project’s theory of change, providing dedicated training and capacity building, and institutionalizing reflexivity as part of all team workshops.

SIAGI’s learning allowed the team to validate existing and develop new theoretical concepts, which formed the basis for the development of fit-for-purpose research tools compatible with ECE protocols. Application of these tools created new learning (published elsewhere in Hamilton et al., 2019, 2020, 2022; Carter et al., 2022; Merritt et al., 2022; Nidumolu et al., 2022). Integration of what was learnt then enabled us to codify and conceptualize our understanding in a way that allowed us to query assumptions and explore the implications of potential interventions for agricultural intensification. Thus, it became possible to start exploring whether the project’s (or other) interventions in agricultural intensification were likely to deliver social inclusion outcomes and livelihood benefits to marginalized farming HHs, or conversely, risked resulting in unintended consequences.

Key findings

Achieving socially inclusive agricultural intensification

The fundamental premise of the project is that agricultural intensification will continue to proceed, delivering positive community development outcomes (e.g. increased aggregate food production), but at the cost of reinforcing social structures of poverty through different forms of exclusion. This premise was affirmed through our on-ground observations, review of literature and secondary data, and through the many narratives shared with us by landless, marginal smallholders, women-headed HHs, and tribal minorities. These narratives built a consistent picture of inequitable outcomes of past agricultural intensification, and disempowerment and lack of agency for poor and marginal groups, inhibiting their broader participation in agricultural intensification opportunities or creating a passive sense of dependency on donors.

Our aspiration was that the ECE approach, which aims to engender a stronger sense of self-efficacy and agency, could counter these entrenched dynamics. The left-hand columns in Tables 2–4 provide an overview of the groups established in each location with the facilitation of SIAGI, and the main development activities that emerged as a result of listening and working with marginalized groups.

Key indicators in the right-hand columns of Tables 2–4 demonstrate that the project contributed to greater empowerment, self-efficacy and agency. All types of groups that we fostered through ECE became confident to engage directly with researchers from the ACIAR sister projects to access technical know-how (for example, irrigation and greenhouse technology in northern West Bengal; new crops in all three locations; pest control in SW Bangladesh). More importantly, as a result of being empowered they were able to approach different levels of local government to access a wide range of available entitlements and investments detailed in Hamilton et al. (2022), Carter et al. (2022) and Merritt et al. (2022).

New entitlements that were accessed by communities ranged from obtaining land titles (thus enabling access to credit) and funding for more shallow tube wells in northern West Bengal, to being contracted directly by West Bengal government watershed programmes to carry out works (instead of the funds going to outside contractors) on the Eastern Plateau (see Carter et al., 2022). In SW Bangladesh, WUGs obtained approval and co-investment from local government authorities to re-excavate canals and establish new culverts and dykes to help manage dry season irrigation water, successfully countering the resistance of elite farmers. A third important domain of empowerment comprised the increased confidence and ability of marginal HHs and community groups to engage with markets on a more equitable footing (Hamilton et al., 2019). The nature of all of these examples leads us to believe that as the changes come from within the groups themselves, they are intrinsically more enduring instances of empowerment, and arguably more enduring development investments (Mishra, 2016; Carter et al., 2022). However, a follow-up study of the persistence of the observed increased levels of self-efficacy, agency and empowerment beyond the life of SIAGI, and without ongoing support from NGOs, would be necessary to further support the above claim.

The potential for ECE to nurture more enduring change was a key to our engagement with government and donors as boundary partners, with the aim of embedding SIAGI approaches to social inclusion in other agricultural intensification and community development efforts. Mobilization of resources from boundary partners in local and state government entities to scale the outcomes achieved in SIAGI varied between West Bengal and SW Bangladesh. In West Bengal this led to partnerships with the Department of Panchayats and Rural Development, which administers the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), and the Water Resources Investigation and Development Department, which implemented the World Bank-funded West Bengal Accelerated Development of Minor Irrigation Program (WBADMIP; http://www.wbadmip.org/). In Bangladesh, the main engagement occurred through the Coastal Embankment Improvement Project (CEIP), administered through the Bangladesh Water Development Board.

In all cases, the initial phase of engagement with boundary partners comprised awareness raising and exposure to initial outcomes of SIAGI work on social inclusion in the case study villages. This was followed by extensive training in ECE through workshops and in some instances, embedding NGO partners within some of the programmes (for example, WBADMIP). The extent to which these partnerships led to significant livelihood outcomes beyond the case study villages is also highlighted in the right-hand columns of Tables 2–4.

Challenges and implications for effective R4D project design

Recognizing and acting on the problem

It is well recognized that complex problems such as social change require a transdisciplinary approach to achieve impact (Hadorn et al., 2006; Noström et al., 2020). The challenges of operationalizing participatory processes have also been amply described (Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Chambers, 2005; Douthwaite et al., 2013). While these approaches constituted the premise for how the project was originally designed, our project was not immune to the continued influence of entrenched knowledge hierarchies and traditional research behaviours which continue to permeate agricultural research institutions and their funders (Carter and Williams, 2019; Carter et al., 2022). For example, most researchers in the team initially found themselves falling back into patterns of research practice that were at odds with the project’s aspiration of taking a transdisciplinary approach. Three factors helped recognize and address the mismatch between aspiration and actual practice.

From the onset, the project team had agreed to an ongoing process of self-reflection. Team workshops and meetings were facilitated in a manner to provide a safe space for members to share views and critiques, irrespective of their background and institution. This helped to challenge and change perceptions on the ‘roles and responsibilities’ of the project partners and thus was a prerequisite for identifying and accepting the problem. The second determinant for the pivot was the ability and willingness of the team to carry out a reset, because they were grounded in a deep desire to achieve meaningful change and greater social inclusion. Thirdly, it required freedom to operate and to deviate from the contractually agreed workplan, which ACIAR as the funder awarded.

Building trust and relationships

It took almost a year to build trust and foster relationships with the communities despite the NGOs having had earlier involvement with some groups, so in effect the project was only facilitating interventions and institution strengthening for a little over 2 years. While at the time of writing there is incipient leadership in the various SHGs, collectives and WUGs, some of these dynamics are tenuous and will require ongoing support from the NGOs. In the experience of our NGO partners, an additional 2-year consolidation and tapering-off period for NGO facilitation and support for community-based groups will be required to achieve sufficient maturity and capacity to endure. This is corroborated by learnings from other social change development programmes that entailed significant social change, for example, the Blue Gold programme in Bangladesh (Afroz, pers. comm.).

A related issue is the perceived cost of conducting ECE, given its time and resource intensity. This was discussed frequently with our boundary partners in WBADMIP, but also canvassed with donor organizations such as ACIAR and the World Bank. Perceived greater costs of implementing ECE include (i) increased funding costs due to longer lead times in the engagement process; (ii) additional time required before outcomes materialize, and delayed outputs to funders; and (iii) personal psychological and institutional/career challenges for the researchers. However, we contend that these costs are offset by the greater likelihood of achieving enduring livelihood and sustainability outcomes, once these self-propagate as a result of deeper social change. The re-orientation of SIAGI to place ECE in the centre of how the project engaged with community ensured the team was able to affect social change in a deeper and potentially more enduring way than conventional R4D projects. Nonetheless, it came with some challenges, which we canvass below.

ECE requires perseverance, understanding of the context, listening to the community, knowledge of government functioning, and skills to mobilize the community and encourage them to persist. Having empathy and belief in the wisdom and capabilities of the community, and willingness to collaborate with them is essential. Facilitation of ECE does not follow a fixed process. Each community has its own undercurrents and moods, which may not be easy to identify and work with. Facilitators need to be aware of the social dynamics, be flexible and positively manoeuvre their strategy and tools during the process. Facilitation needs to be considerate but also needs to constructively provoke and challenge once a basic level of trust is built.

The extent to which values and beliefs inherent in ECE are present within a team depend on the mindsets and institutional culture of team members (Mishra, 2016; Carter et al., 2019). The skills to be a competent facilitator of ECE are not necessarily linked to formal qualifications. Consequently, cross-learning of key staff involved in the implementation of the project was critical to develop a common vocabulary and understanding around engagement. Despite a significant investment by the project, these skills did not necessarily evolve in timeframes commensurate with the project’s needs, and not all team members were capable or wished to develop these skills. Accordingly, design of transdisciplinary projects aimed at facilitating empowerment or social change needs to ensure the requisite skills are available or built in the project. Bammer et al. (2020) provide a useful framework to systematize the nature of these skills. From our experience in SIAGI, critical skills required for transdisciplinary projects practising ECE include:

• Social skills, high emotional intelligence–forming strong working relationships (trust)

• Communication skills–brokering information and knowledge flow

• Cognitive skills–navigating theoretical and methodological issues

• Organizational and coordination skills–enabling complex, multi-stakeholder dialogues.

Researchers’ needs and limitations to change

For most researchers in the team, the transdisciplinary nature of the project initially entailed significant personal shifts in how they saw themselves in the research process and how they undertook scientific research. Discomfort arose from the loss of the traditional primacy of being regarded as the expert, to being able to accept ambiguity and multiple truths, and acknowledging the value of different forms of knowledge. It also required self-work from researchers, to become more capable of active listening, being less judgemental and recognizing the presence of unconscious bias. Equally, the NGO partners also grew more receptive of scientific knowledge and the role researchers can play in community engagement processes.

Beyond the above challenges, the project was naïve in the depth and breadth of institutional change it expected to catalyse beyond the immediate project team. Within the academic institutional project partners, for example, an unanticipated barrier emerged in the tension the SIAGI PhD and MSc students found trying to reconcile traditional (quantitative) methodology norms and rules enshrined in faculty guidelines for acceptance of postgraduate theses on the one hand, and the protocols for data collection ensuing from adherence to ECE principles on the other. While ECE does not preclude quantitative or survey-based methods, there was a mismatch between the time, skills and resources required to obtain robust (quantitative or qualitative) data by interviewing community members (as well as using the dialogue to build trust with the community), and the timeframes, skills and operating funds available to these students in a 2- to 3-year timeframe. Also, respect for the communities who participated in student research should be shown by returning to share research outcomes and results, which is often not feasible within postgraduate timeframes and resources. While SIAGI was not able to fundamentally shift faculty thinking to accommodate more qualitatively based theses, our academic partners have started giving greater emphasis to such practices, and adjusting curricula accordingly.

Conclusions

Creating the conditions for true participation and co-learning, as achieved using the ECE framework, can lead to an increased and potentially enduring level of social inclusion in research-led community development projects. However, this requires a fundamental change in how research engagement is conducted, requiring longer project lead times, appropriate resources and the right partners to develop the skills in the team and build capacity within the community to attain greater self-efficacy and agency. Importantly, it requires a shift in how donors fund and how research institutions support research into community development. These requirements can be met by taking a transdisciplinary approach, involving NGOs and the project beneficiaries as equal partners alongside researchers and government actors.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by CSIRO and partner institutions. The project’s achievements are testimony to the enthusiastic participation of the collaborating communities without whose engagement this project would have failed. We are also grateful to the WBADMIP, whose Project Director Dr Prabhat Mishra provided unwavering support to SIAGI partners in West Bengal to scale some of our interventions.

We would also like to acknowledge the engaging support of Robyn Johnston () and Evan Christen (both formerly ACIAR), who instigated and championed the project within ACIAR. We also greatly benefited from the feedback received from project reviewers Dr Tanya Jakimow (Australian National University) and Dr Pramod Joshi (formerly IFPRI), as well as colleagues within CSIRO (Dr James Butler, Alison Laing) who provided constructive critiques of an earlier version of the manuscript.

Funding

This project was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (LWR/2014/072).

Data availability statement

The data can be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author, pending permission from our institutional ethics committee.

Christian Roth is a former senior principal research scientist at CSIRO with over 20 years of experience in research for development. His recent research focus has been on applying inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches to problems in agricultural and community development in South and South-East Asia.

Michaela Cosijn is a researcher at CSIRO who focuses on knowledge and innovation brokering in agri-food systems to achieve sustainable and resilient transitions through equitable and inclusive engagement processes across value chains.

Lucy Carter is a research scientist and philosopher at CSIRO focusing on the integration of science, practice and local knowledge to inform social innovation and social inclusion in complex settings.

Arnab Chakraborty works for PRADAN in India and has more than 28 years’ experience working with and for institutions of smallholder women farmers and leading collaborative projects with government, research organizations and civil society organisations.

Mahanambrota Das is a PhD scholar at the Geography & Environment Department of Dhaka University. He has over 17 years’ experience in participatory methods, environmental impact assessment, sustainability, natural-based solutions, livelihoods, gender, institutional development, and community engagement issues. His research focuses on the sustainability of polders, livelihoods and community development.

Serena Hamilton is a research fellow at the Fenner School of Environment & Society and Institute for Water Futures at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on the use of integrated assessment and model-based approaches to make better informed decisions about socio-environmental problems.

Alak Kumar Jana is a rural development practitioner of PRADAN with over 27 years of working experience with women’s institutions of indigenous communities around food, nutrition, water and income security. His expertise is in integrated natural resource management to support sustainable farming systems for smallholder farmers and the rejuvenation of ecology.

Lilly Lim-Camacho is a research scientist at CSIRO focused on supporting industry in an era of global change through applied systems approaches. Her expertise is in value chain management and analysis, which she applies in a range of challenges including sustainability, climate adaptation and social inclusion.

Subrata Majumdar is an activist and proponent of research for development and ethical community engagement. He has worked and led several development projects. Currently he is leading an ambitious Eye Sight program in India’s West Bengal and Assam.

Wendy Merritt is a Fellow at The Fenner School of Environment and Society with collaborative research experience on the development and use of integration science methods and models to understand and inform the solution of land and water resource problems.

Pulak Mishra works at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur with research experience of more than 28 years. The areas of his research interests include industrial economics, public Economics and policy, and economics of rural development. He has been involved in several research projects sponsored by reputed national and international agencies. He has also published research outcomes in leading national and international journals.

Rajeshwar Mishra is social psychologist and has taught and researched at social science research institutions and universities across India. He has led and worked with several development research projects and programs. He established the Centre for the Development of Human Initiatives (CDHI), Jalpaiguri, India.

Uday Nidumolu’s research interests are in integrating biophysical science with participatory methods to achieve productive outcomes for agricultural stakeholders, both smallholder farmers and commercial farmers.

Md. Wakilur Rahman has 18 years of experience in teaching and research. His work focuses on gender, livelihoods, and community development. Recently he has been documenting the diverse pathways of community development.

Dhananjay Ray is a mechanical engineer with management expertise and an MBA in human resources. He works with the Centre for the Development of Human Initiatives (CDHI), West Bengal and has 24 years’ experience in the community research and development sector.

Liana Williams is a human geographer at CSIRO with an interest in inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to research to support inclusion and positive change.