Managing access assurance and ability: what should rural development managers learn and unlearn

Abstract

Training of rural development managers has attracted considerable attentionin the recent pest in light of the drive in the Central Government for upgrading the professional skills of development managers. However, the thrust is either training perople at the lower levels or sending senior managers including public servants abroad. The relationship between political economy, socio-ecological context and the training pedagogy have neither been systematically analysed nor pursued. The paper makes a case for building upon experiential knowledge of the rural development managers and suggest alternative training approaches which can demystify the expert knowledge and at the same time provide a basis for greater collegiality between trainer and trainees.