Workshop on Compliance Monitoring and Ground-truthing, 8th-9th December, 2014

The Natural Justice India team of eight members attended a workshop about Compliance monitoring and ground-truthing in the context of industries. The two day workshop held on the 8th and 9th of December was facilitated by NAMATI represented by Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli. The first day of the workshop focussed on the process of ground-truthing and how to extrapolate and filter through multiple available legal data and clearance papers. This was followed by an exercise where the participants were divided into groups and collectively went through various official documents where the content was dissected to check for loopholes within compliance conditions. This exercise enabled the participants in a detailed structural industrial review comprising of reading and analysis of official documents such as letters of environmental clearance, reports on environment impact assessment and compliances etc. 

Day two of the workshop was about following up of the ground-truthing methodology within a context. The discussion was kept significantly contextual where a possibility of paralegal involvement as an important methodology was explored. The process of identifying and training paralegals was discussed. Since monitoring is often an issue when one is not based in the context, constant monitoring is included within the ground-truthing process. It was pointed out that the ground-truthing method can also get ingrained in the larger praxis of community involvement and process of paralegal training, also specifically along the lines of a participatory research project.