Participatory Methodologies as People-Centered Social Innovation: Listening to Voices of People in Policy Practice

Participatory methodology is an important methodological paradigm to understand the diversity and plurality of people’s knowledge. Through a policy study, this article explores the creativity and dynamism of participatory methodology to center people and their voices, and conceptualises the same as people-centered social innovation (PCSI). The process of engagement elucidated in the article is not only a new way of performing research but also a process of co-creating tangible outcomes of the research in the form of a policy which affects the life and livelihood of the community in question. The empirical evidence is drawn from the study referred to here, ‘Compensation Policy and its Implementation Plan for Project Affected Fisherfolk of Mumbai Coastal Road Project (South)’. The article highlights the use of an optimal mix of different participatory tools and the nature of community engagement as social innovation in understanding the experiences of the fisherfolk and their lives and livelihoods and how it was impacted by the said project, subsequently co-creating a compensation policy for the affected communities. The approach adopted in the study attempts to reimagine empirical studies with a social innovation frame as ‘doing’ people-centered social innovation, which gives voice and visibility to the project-affected fishing communities in particular and marginalised actors in general in policy and practice in claiming their rights and entitlements. Through this process of co-production of knowledge, the study captured the multi-faceted impact of the project on the lives and livelihoods of various actors in the value chain, thereby paving the way for individualized compensation rather than household compensation, as is the case with many compensation policies in vogue.