Welcome everybody. My name is Marie Elisa Christie.
I'm director of the Women and gender and international development
program here at the Office of International Research, Education
Development. We have a women and gender development discussion
series. We have one speaker a month and I'm
very excited to have brought outside speaker Dr Buechler who
uh from uh receivers and I can't believe this.
Mhm. Hold on one second. All right,
Stephanie thinking about your interview, introduce yourself. Okay
, So um we also have people watching from web
on webex from the national capital region, from Virginia
tech canvas up there. So please fill out the
sign in sheet some of you already to fill it
out coming in, but if you have a please
fill it out coming out and check if you want
to be on our list serve. Uh we only
send messages about the discussion series or things specific to
gender and international developed, so we don't spam you
. Our next presenter is going to be on November
10. Um and Rosener, who was a student
here and who went on to found an organization,
living threads that works with crafts swimming around the world
. So November 10 even know better. This presentation
is going to last approximately 40 minutes, we'll have
10 minutes of questions and answers or discussion, um
and then I'll be sure to stop by 1 20
so people who have class, we need to leave
will have 10 minutes before our and then we actually
have the room for another 30 minutes, so anybody
who wants to stay and come up and talk to
the speaker can do so at that time and be
sure to have some bagels, water of coffee um
any time including when you're leaving, take them to
go, okay, so please introduce yourself and thank
you very much for coming to join us. Hello
, everyone is wonderful to be here and thank you
so much Maria, listen for bringing me here today
and I'll just tell you a little bit about myself
. I wear three hats at the University of Arizona
. I'm in the Udall Center for Studies in Public
Policy and I do most of my research through that
research center. And then I also teach within the
school of Geography and Development in a program called the
Masters and Development Practice Program. And uh, so
um I have done research uh in many different settings
and I think that enables me to uh maybe have
a unique vision in a sense of what it's like
to fit pieces into a puzzle. And I'm always
using that analogy that I always feel like um several
pieces are always missing no matter how long I stay
in any one field site. So uh I have
done research in uh upstate new york in rural new
york mon dairy farming families. I've done research in
Honduras and around to, and also I've done research
in Bolivia, which is where my father grew up
. And also done research in central and northern Mexico
. You know that we're in Tucson Arizona, we're
just an hour from the border of Mexico. Uh
currently also do research in Tucson in my hometown on
food security issues and urban agriculture. And I've done
research in two areas of India. So while I
don't feel like I'm an expert on either one,
I have uh lived and worked for four years in
uh south India, which is um in Hyderabad and
in the urban peri urban and rural areas. I
studied wastewater irrigation for agriculture and I studied the gender
dimensions of who was planting what types of crops on
what type of land. And then I have now
started research in uh northeast India in Oregon state,
which is right on the border. A look at
the map of Nepal and china. I'll show you
a map and that's what I'm going to present on
today. And I've always interwoven in my topics of
uh issue of water. And then in 2007,
I began to also include the issue of climate change
. And always with livelihoods focus and always looking at
gender issues within uh natural resource based livelihoods. So
that's what I'll present today. My research um which
is really a collaborative project. And I'll talk to
you about that governance livelihoods and gender issues and run
of the river hydropower project areas in Uttarakhand, India
. Mm hmm. Yeah. So setting the context
, India is the third largest coal producer in the
world and it will soon be the largest coal consumer
globally. And coal plants in India and globally,
are really the main contributors to carbon dioxide emissions and
to air pollution. And some of you may know
that for a while, Deli was considered to be
the most um Polluted in terms of its air pollution
city in the world, it is now no longer
, but um India still is home to unfortunately 22
of the world's um cities with the worst air pollution
. So, um hydropower is considered then kind of
an alternative to the dependence on dirty coal for energy
production and um globally, now smaller hydropower dams and
run of the river projects. And I'll describe what
that is um has offered um, you know,
an alternative to polluting coal generated electricity. And this
is um the case in, for example, that
accrues Mexico uh in Nepal in northeast Thailand in Rwanda
. So really globally you're finding um a push towards
uh these other types of hydropower projects rather than large
dams, but very little has been written really on
the impacts of these new types of hydropower projects,
especially related to livelihoods. In um the Malian state
of Uttarakhand over 450 hydro electric or Heidel power schemes
are either proposed or under development by state and central
. Also the central government. These power projects are
joint ventures usually between public and private interests and um
or their developed solely by private companies, sometimes chinese
companies and and companies from uh elsewhere. Um stakeholders
in this rapid hydropower expansion really um are very diverse
. And so um you have these governments challenges as
a result uh between electricity generation and revenue from hydropower
and electricity generation is mainly really to feed urban demand
. So with growing cities, you have a growing
demand for power and for regular reliable power. And
some of the power that is being generated is for
rural areas as well to try to get them connected
now to the grid. Uh and that supplies and
both rural and urban areas. Um but most of
the demand is coming from urban areas as well as
large basket um you know areas where breadbasket areas are
where large irrigation projects need power for pumping groundwater.
And you have so you have electricity generations and the
revenue which is considerable from this hydropower. Um on
the one hand, and then you have on the
other hand, um the impacts on small scale irrigation
systems in rural areas, um you have impacts on
ecosystems and you have impacts on other natural resource based
livelihoods. Um So you have this tension between rural
and urban and between different um interests um that are
represented in anyone basin, river basin. So we
asked in this project uh energy production for whom and
at what cost. So we used a social justice
approach and um we looked um and we applied it
to energy projects and we contend that rural people should
be given a stronger voice than urban based developers and
political power brokers. Um This approach leads to questions
over centralised projects for resource provision and management, including
hydropower. And also um we look at for example
, um uh what young has looked at for in
this case, she looked at um solar power and
um she says that basically um social justice is really
a condition in which the institutional context makes it possible
for everyone to be included in governance processes and entails
distributive results such as the satisfaction of basic needs.
Um So basically we looked at it also from in
terms of social justice, we looked especially gender issues
and I'll let you know a little bit more about
what the gender dynamics are in this area. We
also looked at these questions from a water energy food
nexus perspective, and um when we look at these
issues, um we realize that so often they're treated
independently of one another, but we thought that it's
very important in this case, in this context,
to bring those together. Um because that water then
is really the central thread that interweaves energy in this
case mechanically powered mills for grinding flour and electricity generation
um for largely urban areas, um agriculture and um
in this context it's irrigated and rain fed crops and
fodder for livestock fishing and ecosystems, um provisioning which
is the provision of water but also the regulation of
micro climates. Um so this context really is a
prime example of the water, energy, food nexus
and um yep, the integration now of hydropower into
this context um as a newcomer um is really challenging
because it's integrating than hydropower into local and basin scale
resource use practices and it poses very significant governance challenges
. Oops, let's see. So this is a
track and this is where it's located within the country
of India And it's a very mountainous state. Uh
and 70 of the people work in agriculture, mainly
subsistence agriculture and 45 or more of the population live
below the poverty line. This is the basin which
we're looking at, which belong in a basin is
basically a tributary um of uh the Ball Ganga River
, which is itself a tributary of the Mighty Ganges
or Ganga River basin. So um we it's a
glacier fed river a system and but also uh springs
play a big role in in the hydro ecology of
the area. And um this uh one, the
little blue triangle actually depicts where the Teary Dam is
located, A very large dam in this area.
So um this was part of a project um that
is ongoing, that is the high next project um
irrigation hydropower nexus project um where the objectives are to
identify the run of the river system impacts on water
, energy and food systems, particularly on women and
also to identify institutional policy and program related opportunities and
obstacles to harness this nexus for livelihood resilience. And
the project team uh consisted of the University of Arizona
, which is myself and another colleague um and uh
graduate students within the School of Geography and Development,
the People's Science Institute, which is a research applied
research institute in uh the capital city of Astrakhan,
Dehradun, the University of Delhi. Especially a geographer
who studies issues related to glaciers and ice. Ahmad
, which is um a research institute based in Nepal
. And they were doing some similar work and if
all now they're doing that work on a run of
the river systems in India and the Integrated Mountain Initiative
of New Delhi. Mhm. So um in uh
Brigand there are 450 new projects in planning or construction
phase and those fit into 3 um Categories Micro which
is um up 200 and kill off um capacity generating
capacity. Small hydro 5 to 25 megawatts capacity that
it can generate. Or large hydropower plants with large
dams like the Teary Damn with the generating capacity of
up to 2000 megawatts. So if you look at
the Ganges River, you see how many projects are
actually being implemented or in construction or proposed. And
so, um you have a river system that is
really going to be dominated by these hydropower projects.
And I'm getting up closer to the area that we
studied, um these are the main dams um in
the area. So um now, what is run
of the river? Well, it's being developed in
lubricant as in many other areas of the world,
to avoid the social and environmental costs created by large
dams. So there was a large study Um done
by the World Commission on Dams. And the report
came out in 2000 that really um looked at the
very negative implications of large dams on local rural communities
. And um they include the inundation of large areas
where whole villages are lost and land, agricultural land
is lost for most of the year at least.
Uh And um so and and, you know,
uh issues of basically moving populations from one area which
is going to be inundated to other areas of relocation
. So, um, and huge environmental costs that
were supposed to be avoided by going to hydropower over
, for example, coal well, um, when
you have these large dams, you have production of
methane gas, so it's actually um contributing to climate
change. And so, um yeah, so,
um, we focus then on rural stakeholders in the
Glacier fed Bill and a river. Um and as
I said, that's um located within the Ganges River
basin. And we looked at gender and age differentiated
livelihoods um that include farming, livestock, um wild
and cultivated otter, wild plants and fishing. And
the research methods included then both control villages and uh
villages that were um impacted by these hydropower plants.
And we um, did rapid roll appraisal focus groups
, household surveys, some of them I did,
but I'm a lot of the work was done through
the People's Science Institute, which have a real presence
in those communities already. And um, and then
also a review of project related documents, the hydropower
related documents. So, um, these are the
selected hydropower plants and they belong in a basin.
Um, there are three operational run of the river
hydropower plants in this, um, uh, Rhonda
basin that we focused on, um, and their
varying size up from 3 to 24 megawatts. Um
, and we studied also the 30 kilometer stretch of
this river upstream of where these two rivers, the
reality and the Belinda rivers um, are uh,
join impacted by the teary dam reservoir. So while
it wasn't the focus of our study, we did
get a little bit of a sense of the differences
between villages impacted by the huge terry damn versus impacted
by the run of the river. So this is
run of the river a system. So how is
it different? Well, there is only a very
little uh you know, if it all pond um
because one of the impacts of these dams is that
they they inundate huge areas. Right? So you
want to try to avoid that, to try to
avoid some of the greatest impacts. So this basically
um takes water from a certain area in a river
, diverts it um to the hydropower plant, and
turbines runs it through the turbines and then let's sit
down, uh lets the water out downstream. Um
And sometimes they have a head pond, it's called
, but that's very small. Um And um but
basically in the area that I studied, they also
um run the water through these pipes to get a
greater kind of uh well, it's all gravity fed
basically system, but you get a greater hydrostatic head
is called so that you can generate more power because
the rushing water than through the pipes is what's generating
power. Unfortunately, that is going to create problems
. And I'll tell you about that these pipes that
they have to drill through the mountains. So this
is a picture of pipe uh that um goes for
kilometers down from where the water is abstracted down the
mountain and then eventually hits fed into a um small
pond. And then uh that is fed into the
river. And this is this one is, this
hydropower plant is funded by the State Bank of India
. And um and um so this is what it
looks like near the river, this is where they're
abstracting the river water from, and then it's fed
from that pond into the pipes. So um so
you can see that there is a little bit of
upon but not much of one. Um So it
seems pretty environmentally benign and that's what people have said
that about run of the river. That it's um
it's sort of the answer um to a cleaner energy
source. So what do people in villages use electricity
for? Well it's very simple um electricity use.
And pretty much you can get it in one picture
which I did. Um So they use it for
a fan, they use it for lighting, they
use it to charge cell phones. Um And um
for a T. V. That's it. Okay
so um and you can see they have like maybe
one light bulb, you know in the living room
, maybe one light bulb in the kitchen, that's
it. Um So and very few people would have
a refrigerator. Maybe one health center might have a
refrigerator for medicines. Um But very few people have
anything else that they use electricity for. So they're
not the main energy consumers, but they could use
it for lift irrigation if they have enough power,
which is basically pumping the water from the river.
Okay, so um in these communities women and girls
are really the backbones of agriculture. Um So they
have traditionally been the ones to take care of livestock
. And here it's mostly water buffalo, which they
get their milk from. Um But and also growing
things like vegetables and pulses like lentils um Right sometimes
um in their kitchen gardens or further away and then
but now um with male migration, they are taking
on other roles in agriculture, pretty much all roles
in agriculture. So that includes um work in the
paddy fields, rice fields, well, where are
the men then? Well um this summer I actually
had started a new angle on this research which was
a study of youth. And this followed from my
interest in actually Mexico studying what is the future of
rural communities? Well in order to get a better
sense of that you have to study what are the
youth doing in these communities. So here I also
studied youth and um so I interviewed um uh young
women and young men. And so I found out
through the interviews of young men that they were mainly
going to work as chefs they call it well as
cooks you know in hotels or restaurants in cities.
And um the older men also would work in these
hotels. They would sort of do everything in the
hotel's uh including cleaning and um and the hotels included
restaurants and um that very few men stay Because there's
just not enough employment. Um it's uh there is
some work in construction but then um you know that's
a temporary work, very few men are employed.
Um only like maybe three villagers would be employed in
these hydropower projects if that after it was constructed.
So um you see then the young and this young
man in the light blue shirt, he's a teenager
, he hasn't migrated yet but they would start migrating
when they're you know like about 18 when when they
finished high school. And then this man he's standing
next to, he is already migrated even though he's
a newlywed man. And then you see the old
men back in the villages but you really don't see
middle aged men unless they're there for like their three
month holiday um from work. And I interviewed one
man who normally is in Japan and um he uh
every three years he gets three months to be in
his community and he said, yeah, I planted
beans, but I won't be here to eat them
. Um So this place is a big burden on
women because really they're doing everything and girls. Um
so this is um, women and um animal hubs
spin dri uh they have their barns right below their
homes. And so uh basically almost like an apartment
, but the animals live below. And then uh
they bring the animals down to the river um debate
because these um animals actually need to have mud on
them so that uh they don't get overheated basically.
Um And so um and then uh women and girls
have always done this into the bus or a much
lesser extent, you hardly ever see it. Um
Boys will collect wild and cultivated fodder um from the
forests. Um And it's very difficult work. I
put that basket in the middle, there on my
shoulders and I couldn't believe how heavy it was.
So this is really back breaking work. And um
and so um and it's done by women and it's
fodder for their mainly dairy cattle um which are in
this case uh water buffaloes. And um then uh
they mainly get their spring water from uh springs or
mainly get their house whole um water from springs.
And girls and boys collect this. Also women collect
this either from a spring that's within their community um
or further away um where they have to walk sometimes
, but for young men and women they don't mind
too much because they get to socialize with one another
when they get to the spring. And uh so
but springs then are are very central to this whole
ecology And um brides um we were shown this wedding
album. She actually showed us this and it was
mainly her at at the spring. So during the
wedding ceremony um afterwards they'll actually have the bride go
to the spring and take photos there and she'll get
a nice copper pot as a present. So it
goes to show how important springs are to the local
ecology. Okay, so what's happening then in these
areas with these run of the river systems? Uh
and well um we did a focus group interview with
a group of women and in one of the communities
. And um so they pointed to this hill slope
um that you see here and um these are landslides
um that occur naturally but that are occurring more often
. And um this is one of the reasons why
these landslides are occurring more often and why cracks are
actually developing in the houses and in the schools and
in the cattle sheds is because of the blasting that
is going on to build these tunnels that are going
through the mountain. And this again is part of
the run of the river system where they're running the
water through these pipes um to generate electricity. So
um this is part of what's going on here and
um that's really uh impacting livelihoods. So um one
of the women that was interviewed was from a women's
welfare group and um she um said that uh she
was a former member of this women's welfare group of
Philando village. One of the three we studied and
was a leader in a protest and these are her
words um that she says, so, she says
um Mhm. We came to know about the ongoing
construction plans only when we saw the machines, we
lead the group and reached the construction site. The
moment villagers went to stop the construction police were employed
, the police wouldn't even let us access our fields
. We didn't want them to take away the water
used for irrigating our fields. So we started the
protests that lasted for about a year. We would
take turns going to our fields for work, attending
to the needs of our Children, and also participating
in the protest for hours groups of men and women
would sit determined by the side of the road and
would get up only when surrounded by police. We
participated in frequent hunger strikes in my memory. We
stayed hungry for four days continuously. One time and
eight days another, we were sent to jail at
three different places. Three times a settlement was reached
after one year of tiring agitation when we got water
for irrigating our fields. However, if you ask
me, the most important impact has been on our
mental peace of mind and well being, which can't
be reimbursed. So um there's a lack then really
of uh any kind of participatory process uh around planning
these projects and and yet these projects really are impacting
these communities. And um so uh we did some
mapping then, um and uh this one village we
studied and uh so the blue area of course is
the river. And then um the non impacted areas
are the light yellow and then impacted um are by
dust during the construction are the areas that look like
a gym apron, red and white. And then
um the a new irrigated land was also impacted,
that's the darker gold and those were also uh impacted
. So both both the community grazing land and on
irrigated land was impacted and the irrigated lands um and
the irrigated lands were impacted mainly by um the fact
that there was less water for irrigation because the water
is being abstracted basically upstream of some of these communities
and then it's only let go downstream of that,
so they'll only get water um sporadically when it rains
, but also um whenever um the hydropower manager decides
to let some water go, for example, after
a rainstorm. So um the uh you know,
timings of the irrigation are often wrong and also the
amount of water they're getting is insufficient. Um The
pink areas that you see are the areas that have
um greater settlement than usual with cracks in 86 house
houses, cattle sheds, schools, access roads and
schools, which are the irrigation canals. So the
irrigation canals are getting damaged from these cracks and again
, that's through um the blasting for these pipes.
Um Also the springs are being impacted and this is
partly because of the deforestation going on in the area
, partly because of climate change and variable rainfall,
but also partly because of this blasting which actually um
interrupts the hydro ecology of the area. Um So
the total springs in this village were eight and the
ones that were had reduced water floor five of those
eight. And um two springs totally Dried up and
only one spring was not impacted at all. So
, um let me just read you a little bit
more. I know we're running out of time a
little bit, but um so um who are these
hydropower developers? Well um the villagers in one village
says uh said we have been living here for generations
and now they have taken everything away. The developer
belongs to the same district, but is now a
large industrial list living in the large city of Dehradun
. Um So it's a local that moved away and
a migrant um we told others learn a lesson from
our village and um so um on what are some
possible programs that we looked at in this project that
would help communities like this? Um Well one is
spring shed development and with a variety of different activities
. Um but these projects have been undertaken by non
profits in neighboring states, and they could be used
in Uttarakhand. Um and they're used to rejuvenate springs
use for household water consumption, and also used to
replenish the water a little bit in these rivers.
Um What could be some policies that would help these
communities will benefit sharing um in addition to compensation for
damages, um would be useful and um so that
local populations gain real access um to what is now
often only formal policies on the books. Um but
that don't really happen on the ground. Um so
there are on the books, um is the stipulation
that one of the new hydropower cost should go to
a local area development fund. Um and that three
of the generated electricity would go to um a local
village level government um for a new infrastructure. Um
Now, uh in practice though, this really doesn't
happen often. There's a whole lack of transparency and
women are often not involved at all, even though
they're the ones who are in the communities and whose
daily lives are being impacted. And this is not
unusual. Um this World Commission on Dams study that
came out in 2000 and showed that globally women are
more impacted by dams um than men. Uh and
um there in part because they're heavier workloads and in
part because they don't have a say in any kind
of like compensation or benefit sharing. Um So Nepal
. Um and this is through our s ahmad colleagues
. She um has given this example where um they're
seriously considering and if it hadn't been for the earthquake
, it might have been enacted already. Um but
they're considering a federally mandated um Law that would require
10 revenue sharing for all new hydropower projects. And
um so this would give more of the benefits,
the more of the profits to the local communities.
Um Micro hydro can be helpful for communities that are
very isolated and not connected yet grid. Um Or
who um would have a greater say over where that
energy gets used. And let me just give you
a really quick example. Um one village located within
the study area um had a um micro hydropower project
. This is a picture of it um and this
multipurpose hydropower unit mechanically powers and oil press for seeds
to make oil, rice holler and flour milk creating
livelihood opportunities for the village community consisting of 65 families
. They use the same uh water to irrigate 6
to 7 hectors of land. So basically at night
they generate power with the water and during the day
they let the water out for use in irrigation.
The villagers are proud owners of the project because they
put in the labor for its construction and because it's
now operated by trained community members, an older man
from this village stated this project is ours. We
brought it here while we are living, we won't
allow any other project. Um so, uh so
this is an example of where um you know,
the same type of project, but on a much
smaller scale can be helpful for communities to actually have
more ownership over power generation, but also um you
know, water availability for irrigation. Um so a
social justice approach in conclusion revealed the need to have
local voices and livelihoods be taken into consideration when hydropower
projects are planned, Such an approach would be useful
for policymakers and urban planners. Um and uh stakeholder
meeting next month with policymakers in Delhi, we hope
to prove this partially through a policy brief and partially
through um actually distributing this article that I and my
fellow members on the project have just finished. Um
so this kind of approach um would avoid this vicious
cycle that basically that they're in which is the male
migration, you know, swells urban populations, right
, increasing urban energy demand because now there are more
people in those cities while in the rural areas due
to mail migration, fewer people are working in agriculture
translating into less food produced for the rural and the
urban populations. And this is a problem because India
has to feed more and more people just like the
rest of the world were struggling with that issue of
how do we feed um all the people that will
soon populate the earth. Um so and the integration
of centralised and decentralised power schemes like this small one
that I showed you uh requires adaptive multi level and
collaborative institutional arrangements that are decentralized and account for local
conditions. Women, the agricultural backbone of Dragon need
to be consulted from project planning to implementation stages,
including giving them more sane compensation and benefit sharing processes
. Multipurpose micro hydro development can contribute to food and
energy security and then Malia's and local watershed programs can
also help to revitalize spring water sources. So this
is the new article that just came out last week
um in the uh journal Water and it's relinking governance
of energy with livelihoods and irrigation in Africa and India
. And uh I worked on that with my colleagues
and um you can uh ask me for the link
to it if you like and thank you very much
if you have comments or questions, I think there's
time to do that. I'm gonna let step and
come back here. But so we have about 10
minutes for questions, answer discussion. If any of
you need to slip out please do so quietly.
Um otherwise you wait to the end of 10 years
and then turn on the mind if you're sleeping with
his life. Yeah. What? What? Mhm
. That Stephanie, thank you very much. Mhm
. I have a question about you mentioned that the
employment opportunities aren't really there, they might hire one
or two or three people and you said that was
temporary. It seemed like that was mainly at the
infrastructure development phase. So once they're in place,
how many people are employed and who are those people
, they work for the public, private, you
know, arrangement or private arrangements are often from other
places, like there's no uh income generation for the
local community. Well it really depends case by case
and also it depends on the size of the power
uh power project, the larger ones require more training
and um but I'll give you an example of where
really changes in the air. So I interview this
summer, a young woman who had come from one
of the villages originally but then moved with her family
to a city and then she became trained as an
engineer and she came back to work in that hydropower
plant. So, and she really believed in hydropower
um and it was very interesting and she's sort of
being seen as a role model for the young women
and girls in her community. She's now living with
her grandmother because her parents still live in the city
. Um But so um but no very little employment
in general is generated um really only during the construction
phase is, but even then um they prefer actually
people who are sort of itinerant construction workers who will
stay intense, you know, and not have really
that family obligations, although they often bring their families
with them um and their men and women who are
working on these projects. Uh And then the truck
drivers who are mainly not from the local area.
And then um once the projects are completed, then
basically, it's only, um, you know,
maybe, um, usually about three people and sometimes
local villagers will be trained in there. All men
will be trained in how to run these projects.
Um, Now, what we're finding in very rural
areas, isolated areas is that the systems break down
and then the parts aren't available locally. So then
they have to go all the way to Delhi,
usually um to get the parts, which is about
six hours away and then they have to bring them
back and then they have to carry them on their
backs to these rural communities. So it's a real
problem. And uh, so, um, but
yeah, there's not much employment created through these,
in fact, more employment is taken away. Um
, I didn't have time to mention the issue of
the fishermen, but they have lost their livelihoods largely
because there are very few fish now in these rivers
because of the basically if you interrupt the flow,
um, you don't have sufficient environmental flows to allow
for fish even with a fish ladders that hasn't worked
all that well. Um their questions for comments.
Yes. What do we do for something? What
development? Okay. We're trying to record. Thank
you very much for your great presentation. My question
has to do with the qualitative research that you were
conducting with the focus groups. How did you do
that? Different languages, translation, women and power
balance. And can you talk a little bit about
your qualitative methods, please? Yeah, yeah.
So we tried to have a focus group, um
, interviews that were with women and then separate ones
with men. Um but we also tried to uh
conduct somewhere. It was with lower caste women because
sometimes they will not participate as much if they're together
with higher caste women. So we tried to divide
it a little bit by class caste uh and then
by location um you know uh within the village because
these villages are often so big that they have Hamlets
associated um with these villages. So we wanted to
get a nice geographic spread as well. How about
that language? Yeah, so the language um you
know basically in India I do, unlike in latin
America, I do work with research assistance. So
um when I'm running a focus group interview, I
will have a research assistant with me and so translating
. Yeah, yeah, because also sometimes the local
um uh language is different and local actually expressions are
different, so Yeah, yeah, but it's possible
to do it and uh but we had several people
from the project, like two or three even because
then you can sort of have people spread out from
the project and then getting some of these side conversations
which are sometimes just as interesting that people are having
the interactions with people with each other. Yeah.
Thank you very thoughtfully, other questions or Seriously?
Hello? Mhm. All right, thank you for
those hard core people who stayed. Uh So again
we actually have the room another 30 minutes. So
anybody that wants to just come up and talk to
Stephanie you can um Thank you for coming. And
I wanna see now all the students left. We
send out survey link to everybody on webex. Let's
see. Now we send we send the link up
to people on webex. We send it to everybody
here who signed up. Okay? So we'll track
your emails and send it to please fill them out
. Really helps us to get funding for these in
the future. So it is important to us,
the last thing help yourself to food and drinks.
And if you've got the water bottles that are recyclable
, there's a recycle bin outside, so thank you
very much.