Published by: PUKAR

 Supported by: Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT)
First Edition: June 2008
Price: Rs.500/-

Barefoot Researchers is a term based upon the famous Barefoot Doctors of China, people who were minimally trained yet provided the most critical, at times life saving services to those who could not access it, they being at the margins of the society.

PUKAR’s Barefoot Researchers, a term coined by Arjun Appadurai, represents similar cadre of youth who are trained over a period of a year to do basic social science research. With this knowledge, they explore many aspects of their own lives, families, neighbourhoods and produce new knowledge about the city which is anchored in their living experiences.

PUKAR fosters the ability of the youth to explore the social, political, cultural and economic aspect of the city through research and use this research tool as an alternative pedagogy, advocacy, intervention and transformation for themselves and for the communities they work with and work for. We believe that this knowledge, produced in many diverse forms and shapes by those who know this city intimately, has as much credibility as that produced by those in the high-end academic institutions. In this novel experiment, the youth gain the ability to reflect upon themselves, learn to ask vital questions related to social practices and political governance, challenge the prevalent wisdom and negotiate the dialogue in their favor.

In the words of Arjun Appadurai “ With the tools to understand how to shape a research idea, these young Mumbai citizens will go out in the world with a capacity for gathering evidence and using that evidence to make arguments about their future and becoming a problem solver for the future of their city”.

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Paach Prashna Shambhar Uttare 

Published by: PUKAR
Supported by: Sir Ratan Tata Trust

Year: 2006, Price: Rs. 125/-, language:marathi

The book is a documentation of the process of project “Tarunaee ” which involved Marathi speaking youth in Mumbai for articulating their concerns about urban life. The participants represented diverse socio-economic and educational strata and had no previous experience in research. They made innovative use of various media such as songs, photography, paintings and poems for documenting their concerns related to the broad themes such as environment, migration, language, globalization, media and sexuality. The project explored the process of research and documentation as tools for social intervention and pedagogy. The transformations in their lives are documented in this book.