‘Promote Citizenhood Education for sense of civic responsibility’
| Date :30-Oct-2019 |
By Ajay Mardikar :
DRARUN Kumar,retired Associate Professor from Matru Sewa Sangh Institute of Social Work, Nagpur has been writing on the concept of ‘Citizenhood’, which is different from citizenship and aims at developing social and civic sense. Dr Arun Kumar’s workshop on Citizenhood Education, organised by National Association of Professional Social Workers in India (NAPSWI), at Lucknow was highly appreciated.
The specific objectives of the workshop were - to introduce the idea of ‘citizenhood’ and compare it with the ideas of ‘citizenship’ and ‘civic sense’; to engagethe participants in examining the need for citizenhood education; to engage the participants in exploring some core aspects (knowledge and skills) of citizenhood education especially with reference to the youth; and to engage each participant in preparing a brief outline of any one programme / project / campaign of citizenhood education. Dr Arun Kumar has been working on the idea of ‘Citizenhood’ since the last six years. He explains that ‘Citizenhood’ is a responsible and caring mode of existence. It is a way of living in which a person is aware of her/his identity as a citizen of the local-national-global context and is sensitive to her/his contextual obligations.
He stated that‘citizenhood deficit’ is at the root of several of the problems in the society and ‘citizenhood education’ is an important way to deal with the ‘citizenhood deficit.’ By and large the education system has only paid lip-service to the cause of citizen formation. In the series of more than 30 articles that he has written on the LinkedIn platform, he has also introduced the idea of CQ (Citizenhood Quotient) that can be an immensely powerful tool for an examination of one’s own life and for how to make it more meaningful and purposeful. Dr Arun Kumar has been trying to spread the message through his writings and interactive sessions with a wide spectrum of citizens, individually and in groups.
The participants at the workshop at Lucknow included stalwarts such as Prof R R Singh, former Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, who was also Dr Arun Kumar’s teacher; Prof Sanjai Bhatt, President of NAPSWI and Professor at the Department of Social Work, University of Delhi and Prof Murli Desai, former Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mubai. The participants actively contributed to the discussion. The question whether the idea of ‘citizenhood’ had any relevance for social work practice was also raised and was answered in the affirmative by several of the participants.