Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) : Implications in Aquaculture

The book is a study on participation of fish farmers in fishery activities based on the technique of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is a relatively new approach which provides planners in all fields of development, including aquaculture, with an alternative tool for collecting the information they need to plan their activities.The study was carried out in the 10 No. Malancha Gram Panchayat (a cluster of eight village) under Tapan block in Dakshin Dinajpur district. After ice-breaking with the fish farmer’s, seven tools of Participatory Rural Appraisal were applied to learn progressively from, with and by rural people about their life and conditions in general and to investigate the fishery resources, occurrence of fish diseases, practices in fisheries, choice matrix of fish production and problem-cause analysis for lower production of fish, SWOT analysis of fish enterprises in particular. The book analyses the indigenous knowledge-sources and discusses the different PRA tools in the light of aquaculture activities of the fish farmers.