Políticas públicas baseadas em tecnologias sociais e o semiárido brasileiro: um estudo sobre o Programa Cisternas

Abstract

The debate on the topic of 'public policy' has been growing and it is necessary in the face of a scenario of worsening social problems. This is because public policies are developed based on a demand from society and enable the resolution and/or mitigation of these problems, through mechanisms that promote social equity. Some Social Technology (TS) initiatives resulted in public policies of a social nature, and are examples of experiences that originated without the help of the public power, but which had their practices enhanced and disseminated when incorporated as policies, such as the Cisterns Program which introduced to its scope TS originated from the active action of the community, so that the peoples inhabiting the semi-arid regions of Brazil (preferably) could have increasingly better living conditions. Given this context, the objective of this study is to analyze the impacts generated by the Cisterns Program in the Brazilian semiarid region. Therefore, regarding the methodological procedures, the study has a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory nature, interpretivist paradigm, and adopted as a researcs strategy, the single case study having as investigated subjects, beneficiaries of the Cisterns Program and Representatives of Civil Society Organizations. Data collection took place through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, and for the treatment of these data, the technique of Content Analysis by categorization was adopted. The results showed that the Cisternas Program is not just a piece of equipment (the TS), this is just the materialization of the operationalization of such a policy and its impacts, in which the following stand out: improved access to water for consumption; desertification mitigation; increase in the region's productive capacity; reduction of rural exodus; increase in income and articulation and mobilization between communities. However, despite all these benefits, it was also evident that, faced with the dismantling of public policies of a social nature in Brazil, the main challenge of the Cisternas Program is to find ways of maintenance and survival, a situation aggravated by the impacts generated by the health crisis at the time. of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such findings corroborate the strengthening of the understanding of the Cisternas Program as a public policy based on TS and its relevance to the advancement of the regions where it operates, mainly in the Brazilian semiarid region.