Partnership for change: A collaborative framework for transformative engagement with the communities

Institutes of knowledge production, namely higher educational institutes, interpret their role in relation to engagement in various forms. This article focuses on one such collaboration between academia and a local rural community intended to address their socioeconomic problems through a technological intervention based on an integrated community engagement and asset-based community development framework. Whilst these collaborative partnerships between academic and community experts can themselves take a range of forms, this article argues that, to be effective, researchers have to deal with not just the practical issues of how the community participates in research, but also the sublime issues of knowledge and power, especially in places where colonial imprints still persist. Thus, drawing on empirical examples from two significant initiatives of Indian academia, namely the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan and the Rural Action Technology Group, this article, through a project initiative, highlights the significance of the relational dimensions to these collaborative partnerships and the significance of equitable partnership-based trust, reciprocity and mutual respect using case study analysis. Through ethnographic field experiences of a rural Indian village, it identifies what could produce epistemically just dynamics, critical to achieving transformative engagement. In doing so, the article makes a case for meaningful ways in which the efforts of the higher education institutes could be interlinked with assets of the community to help restore them to thriving and resilient communities, as witnessed in the pre-colonial rule of India. It further offers researchers and community-engagement practitioners a pragmatic way forward, along with caveats for achieving such transformation.