Margin as Method Margin as Method
A cut-paper collage of archival photographs — people walking together, seated in a circle, a woman in profile — layered with leaves and torn colour fields.

Margin as Method

The margin is not merely a place.
It is a way of seeing.

Margin as Method is an evolving framework for recognising lived experience as a source of knowledge, capacity and leadership.

Explore the Pathway Charcha session · 15 September, India Habitat Centre

01Reversing the gaze

Development usually begins with what is missing.
This begins with what is already there.

Conventional development approaches often begin by identifying what marginalised people lack. Margin as Method reverses this gaze. It begins with the knowledge, survival intelligence, relationships and capacities that people have already developed while navigating exclusion.

The usual starting point

People are read for what they lack

  • Deficits to be filled
  • Needs to be assessed
  • Beneficiaries to be trained
  • People to be empowered

Where Margin as Method begins

People are read for what they already hold

  • Knowledge already held
  • Survival intelligence
  • Relationships and care
  • Capacities built while navigating exclusion

What is Margin as Method?

People living at the margins are not blank slates waiting to be trained or empowered. A recurring methodological insight across two decades of field practice

Margin as Method is an asset-based and identity-positive approach to leadership and social change. It treats lived experience not merely as personal testimony, but as a legitimate source of knowledge from which individuals, communities and institutions can learn.

The framework seeks to surface this situated knowledge, create spaces for reflection and healing, build solidarity across identities, and translate learning into collective and institutional action.

02The methodological pathway

Five interconnected
processes

Margin as Method currently moves through five interconnected processes:

A man rests his cheek against an older woman's head as she smiles and holds his arm close, a quiet moment of remembered closeness.

Smriti

Memory

Revisiting lived experiences and recognising how identity, exclusion and social location have shaped them.

Movement 1 of 5

These are interconnected movements, not a rigid or universally linear sequence.

03Origin and grounding

Two decades of
field learning

Margin as Method emerged from two decades of field learning generated through Prantakatha’s engagement with different experiences of marginalisation.

This journey has included sustained work and relationships with:

  • Survivors of trafficking
  • People living with HIV
  • Children and young people requiring protection
  • Homeless communities
  • Young citizens
  • Queer and transgender people
  • Youth across identities, geographies and social locations
A close-up of hands sketching a stylised face in pencil on a paper doily, with a pen and eraser resting on the table nearby.

Across these contexts, a recurring methodological insight emerged: their lived realities already contain knowledge about survival, care, power, institutions, negotiation, resistance and community-building.

2024
Margin as Method was articulated to identify, organise, examine and share this accumulated field learning as an evolving pedagogical and practice framework.

What Prantakatha is

The twenty-year-old institution and field laboratory from which the learning behind Margin as Method has emerged.

Visit prantakathaindia.org

What Margin as Method is not

Not a separate organisation, and not a collection of Prantakatha’s programmes. It is the evolving framework through which learning from different communities, interventions and historical periods is being organised, tested and shared.

Charcha session creative: From Lived Realities to Leadership Abilities — The Margin as Method Approach, hosted by Prantakatha

Upcoming session

From Lived Realities to Leadership Abilities: The Margin as Method Approach

  • Date15 September 2026
  • Time11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
  • VenueJuniper Hall, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
  • Hosted byPrantakatha
Register for Charcha In partnership with Charcha and India Impact House

04Purpose of the platform

A space for documentation, reflection, research, dialogue and collaboration

It will bring together community knowledge, case studies, practice reflections, facilitation resources and learning exchanges through which the framework can be examined, challenged, adapted and further developed.

Practice

Community stories and case studies showing how the five processes have been carried out in different contexts, in the words of the people who lived them.

Stories being gathered

Knowledge

Practice reflections, research and facilitation resources for anyone examining, teaching or adapting the framework.

Resources in preparation

Collaborate

Learning exchanges with practitioners, institutions and researchers who want to test the framework alongside us and contribute to how it develops.

Open to conversation
Bappaditya Mukherjee, photographed in front of a painted tree mural whose branches are made of children's coloured handprints.
Bappaditya MukherjeePrantakatha

05Authorship and acknowledgement

Conceptualised by
Bappaditya Mukherjee

Margin as Method was conceptualised and articulated by Bappaditya Mukherjee, drawing upon two decades of field practice within Prantakatha.

The framework also acknowledges the lived knowledge contributed by community members, youth leaders, survivors, colleagues, alumni, mentors and collaborators whose experiences have continuously shaped its evolution.