In order to define the population sample, decisions had to
be taken in the planning of the survey. Three factors were
taken into consideration. These were expense, time and
accessibility. Thus, it was impracticable to meet all the
Anglo-Indians selected for an interview. For example the
flight to Nagpur was cancelled at the last minute on
account of the inaccessibility of members of the community.
The expense of the trip was weighed against the number of
interviewees - it was too expensive to fly to Nagpur to
meet just five people.
Travel arrangements during the monsoon season in India can
be a nightmare. When one has to keep deadlines and people
are travelling many miles to participate in interviews, the
schedule did become extremely difficult to keep, but none
of the prearranged interviews were cancelled by either the
researcher or the respondents.
For example, when planning interviews, one had to accept
the time, the date and the place according to the
interviewee's preference. This meant crossing the capital
city New Delhi twice in one day to interview three
different groups of people. In the airline sector, Cochin
to Bangalore, the flight was cancelled by Indian Airlines,
and plans had to be quickly made to switch from air to rail
in an overnight journey from Cochin to Bangalore.
Haryana was included only on arrival in New Delhi. The
community organised themselves most efficiently and were
eager to participate in the research. In Meghalaya the
accommodation was unavailable on arrival because of
communication problems. It was only quick thinking and a
timely telephone call to the Loreto Roman Catholic Convent
in Shillong which solved the problem of "homelessness" for
a weekend.
186