Abstract

Social Work Education in the North East region of India began only in the year 1992. Since then a number of institutions have come forward to offer Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate programmes and studies in the discipline. This article captures the history of seventeen recognised institutions offering social work programmes in the region and draws out key empirical issues pertaining to course curriculum, field work and the concretisation of social work as a recognised profession within the said context.

Introduction

The journey of Social Work profession in India began with the first school of social work, namely the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work (now known as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences) established in Mumbai in 1936. Since then there has been many shifts in its practice and approaches in consonance with the changing realities. (bodhi s.r, 2012) There has also been through the years an increase in the number of Social work Institutions in India. The growth and spread of social work education in India was recognised by the government, with the University Grants Commissions (UGC) appointing the First Review Committee for Social Work Education in 1965 and the Second Review Committee in 1980 for the promotion, maintenance of standards of education, coordination of social work education, training, research and practice. In 2001 the third review committee sought to relate and reconnect social work education to the social realities. It recommended the curriculum to be divided in three sets. These are: 1) Core set includes philosophy, ideology, values, ethics, theory and concepts. 2) The supportive set deals with knowledge and skills to assist the core set. 3) The interdisciplinary set includes theories, concepts from other disciplines which relates with social work according to students choice (Thomas, 2010).

As Mehta (1952) points out, the emergence of Schools of Social Work towards the creation of a cadre of professional social workers, however, small in number, and the ever-increasing social consciousness led to the emergence of the Indian Conference of Social Work in the year 1947. The annual deliberations of this organisation have been of great service in bringing together professional workers, institutional organisers and voluntary workers in every field of social service. Joint deliberations lead to greater initiative, more organised co-operation and a gradual co-ordination of activities in different fields of social work.

Moorthy (1971) defined social work as an intense human activity believing in helping the helpless. Aid to the helpless could be given in several ways. But the best and highest type, is recognized to be that process of bringing help, whereby the helpless are enabled to help themselves. Rao (2013) noted that Social work educational institutions were traditionally the centres for knowledge production in the early decades. Since the 1980s, there has been gradual emergence of research and knowledge production outside social work educational institutions. NGOs have contributed a great deal to the production of social work knowledge. The emergence of new modes of knowledge production, for example various tools used for assessing impact, vulnerability, organizational strength of NGOs, SHGs, protection of human rights, developed by other than social work academia and practitioners, was expected to alter the discourse about the perspectives and substantive contents of social work education in India.

Seventy five years of Social Work education is marked by experimentation, expansion, stagnation and sudden explosion of social work institutions. There are about 350 schools in India as per the sources gathered from experts of social work from across the country. Among those, Karnataka marked with 72 schools/departments, Maharashtra marked with 60 and several south Indian states occupy large number of social work institutions. Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakand, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur and Bihar is marked with one school/department and there are no schools at all in five of the North-East States (Botcha, 2012). Social work as a profession has grown considerably over the last twenty years. Yet, the fact that the concept of social work as a profession did not grow in India, but came by a process of cultural borrowing has had its consequences in the manner of its development. There is a great gap between the ideas of the professional social worker and the ideas that inspire the traditional forms of social endeavour. To a certain extent this gap has been sought to be bridged by the suggestive power of such words as sciences and training (Gore 2011)

Professional social workers in India are engaged in development and welfare activities, from micro to macro levels, by governmental, voluntary, corporate and international organisations, and through people-oriented community-based social movements and action groups. Social work profession works towards empowerment of marginalised and vulnerable groups, actualising their rights by democratisation of social systems. The profession is guided by secular professional values of human dignity, human rights and social justice that promote self worth, people’s participation and self determination, democratic pluralism, local self-governance, and peaceful collaborative social relationships. In the current times there have been lots of debates and deliberation on the approach of professional social work. As Bodhi (2011) observed that, efforts to insert liberatory and emancipatory elements into Indian Social Work education, are now visible and are being articulated in the public domain. Most of these efforts are emanating from critical social workers who have become wary of the perils and hypocrisy of traditional social work and its role in fueling and maintaining the status quo. The lack of insight into the oppressive nature of its practice and the present operational perspectives, the lackadaisical attitude adopted towards introspection into existing lacunae and the reluctance exhibited towards truthful ‘soul-searching’ for seeking alternative is very disturbing.

India’s North East region is popularly celebrated for its cultural diversity and is well known for numerous problems ranging from inter and intra conflict, governance deficit and insurgencies. The education system in North East has not gone beyond the borders of traditional social sciences for many decades. Likewise the sudden explosion of Social Work education in other region of India in 1960s and 70s, and especially since the past decade has also rubbed on the North East region which is seeing a sudden increase of Social Work institutions under Government and Private ownership. Needless to say, Social Work education was neither recognised as a profession nor any sort of professional practice in comparison to other more established professional courses by the people of the region itself. Though there has been an escalation in the number of Institutions offering social work education, this is accompanied with considerable challenges.

Social Work education and a strong vibrant profession without doubt can play a vital role in many different sectors in the region such as Health, Education, Livelihood, Peace Building and so on. There is great potential for research and knowledge production which can result in unlocking new ways of engagement on sticky complex issues. Unlike trainess in the social sciences, trained social work professionals are in a better position to directly impact realities of the poor, marginalised and excluded people. The Social Work profession across the world and in India draws its central tenets of empowering vulnerable and oppressed groups in society to the efforts of many historic figures, however the profession in the North East region is still in its early stage and much care must be taken to deepen and strengthen its curriculum, methodology and outreach in order to become meaningful, efficacious and relevant to the region.

Status of Social Work Education in North East

As shown in the table below, social work education in the region began with Mizoram University in 1992. The university currently offers Bachelor of Social Work (BSW), Master of Social Work (MSW) and Mphil and PhD programmes in the said subject. This was soon followed suit by the Assam University in 1997, offering Social Work programmes as BSW, MSW, Mphil and PhD programmes. These two universities were the only universities till early 2000 that offered social work education in the region. Plus the two universities, Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi Regional Institute of Mental Health (LGBRIMH) is another regional institute that offers Mphil in Psychiatric Social Work within the region.

The recognition of Social Work as a profession was not well known in the region for many decades as compared to other parts of the country. However by 2006 there has been an unexpected rise of social work programmes offered by Government and Private Institution. As on 2013, there are 17 Institutions/Universities that offers social work programmes and 15 of these institutions began in 2006 onwards. From data available (as shown below) it could be observed that social work education is a recent phenomenon in the north east region.

Table 1: Social Work Education Institute/University in North East India

For many years students from North East studied Social Work in Institutions outside the region and many ended up working outside the region itself. Nevertheless a few came back to their hometown or state to seek employment either within government or non government institutions. The main reason for this seems to be that during the 1990s till early 2000s, there was less scope for trained social workers to avail work in the region and if there were opportunities, the minimal financial remuneration was not attractive enough. Thus most preferred to work outside the region. Another fact also relates to Social Work not being recognised as a profession by the people in the respective states. It was only recently that people became aware about social work as a profession. Following this, students started opting for social work education offerred by various institutes and after passing out from various social work programmes they have joined NGOs who till recently did not have trained social work or trained person to run the NGOs with the exception of some National and International NGOs. However the awareness levels among people and students about social work education is still wanting.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that since the past two-three years the trend towards recognising social work education as a educational and career option is picking up pace with many institutions offering social work programmes. These initiatives received a further fillip with the entry of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences situating itself in Guwahati. Currently there are many students who have started opting for Social Work programmes as compared to other traditional social science disciplines such as Sociology, Political Sciences, etc. Another important feature relates to employability which makes social work programmes attractive as many of the Social Work graduates are absorbed in jobs whether in Governmental or Non-Governmental organisations. In comparison to disciplines of the Social Sciences, the possibility of being employed after a Post Graduate degree in Social Work is quite high. This employability factor seems to have contributed greatly towards the mainstreaming of social work education in the region.

However even though there has been a drastic increase in institutions offering social work programmes, these are mostly confined to the State of Assam, which currently has seven institutions out of seventeen in the whole North East. Meghalaya has four institutions and other states like Manipur and Mizoram have two each while Nagaland has one institution. It is interesting to note that other states like Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim do not offer Social Work programmes so far.

A fact that must be taken into consideration is that most of the Institutions offering Social Work programmes are private or affiliated to some University and in some institutions where only Sciences and Management programme are offerred, Social Work education as part of their programme is included. On this count certain questions arises related to the instersection of Social Work Education and the Sciences / Management stream. Is the above taking place because Social Work education has become marketable? or is it that social work education is seen as an outreach for trainees in other streams?

Data from field studies conducted by the author shows that most of the students who are studying social work in the Institutions or universities are mostly from the region. Exceptions are in the case of TISS Guwahati campus that has 34% for outside the region and 66% are reserved for the students from the region. The TISS Guwahati Campus, has students from different parts of the country. However students in the other social work institutions are mostly from the region with the exception of one or two students.

The author while collecting data on the said subject found out that most of the students from the region (at least 97% of the students) whom the author has interacted wanted to work in the region or go back to their own state and work. Another interesting finding is that majority of the students from outside the region who are studying social work in the region prefer to go back outside the region after completion of their studies. Some factors indicated were less salary within the region in comparison to other regions plus the turmoil engulfing the region.

Challenges

In the North East out of the present 17 institutions offering Social work, their intake of students vary according to their Instituions/Universities capacities. The TISS Guwahati offers Social Work programmes in four specialisation i.e Counselling (CS), Public Health (PH), Livelihood & Social Entrepreneurship (LSE) and Community Organisation and Development practice (CODP), with an intake strength of seventy students for all the specialisations divided accordingly (20 each for LSE & CODP and 15 each for CS and PH). Assam University, Silchar has 200 students in BSW and 73 in MSW. Likewise the number of students vary from 40-80 per batch. Altogether out of the 17 social work institutions, on an average, there are around 500-600 social work graduates graduating per year and most of the graduates, it is assumed, engage in some work within the region. This trend is interesting showing nummerically the reach of social work education.

At this juncture, there is enormous challenges for Social Work as a profession perataining to its curriculum especially on fielld work placements, employability and overall quality of trained professionals. As Siddiqui (2001) argues; social work education currently suffers from lack of focus in terms of its professional identity. It should become more focussed in terms of specific skills it wishes to impart to its learners. It should prepare students for specific professional tasks identified as developmental or curative rather than becoming too ambitious.

At the North East zone consultation on Social Work education, it was discovered that there were many issues and challenges faced by the different Institutions/Universities from different states. Nevertheless it was learned that increasing number of students are opting for social work course as compared to four or five years back and that there has been increasing numbers of Institutions offering social work course both in graduation and post graduation levels. This gathering held on March 2012 at TISS Guwahati Campus was the first regional (Northeast) consultation that has taken place with regards to social work education. The consultation was organised under the banner of National Network of Schools of Social Work.

A total number of eleven institutions participated in the meeting. Among these institutions five offerred only Bachelor of Social Work (BSW), six institutions offered both BSW and MSW programmes and three institutions offered only post-graduate studies. Further two Institutions offered BSW, MSW, Mphil and PhD programmes and one Institution offered Mphil programme. The states represented in the meeting are Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Mizoram.

It was noted during the consultation that each department, college or institution vary in terms of methodology in relation to students’ selection process, students’ intake, curriculum, pedagogy, field work structure, faculty-student ratio, assessment and placement. However the challenges they faced were similar in the context of the region. Social work education has developed their own unique standards in different states of the region. Each state has its own unique contextual challenges and opportunities in regards to social work education. Though there are differences and varied opinions, there are also similarities in specific areas like: (1) Identity for Social Work Education (2) Quality concept of Social Work Education (3) Values & Ideologies of Social Work and redefining the same (4) Employability for students coming out of the program (5) Teaching Methodology and success models.

Though there are numerous issues and challenges in the context of social work in north east region and since social work as a profession offered by many institutions is still in its nascent stage, there is need to re-look and re-learnt from the other institutions who have grown through many phases and might probably have pass such. As (Desai, 1985) point out that a great deal of responsibility lies ahead for the profession if it is to vindicate its existence in the next decades as it moves forward to a century in which it will either prove itself, or, find itself increasingly become irrelevant to the people and the times with which it is confronted. It has come a long way from its bold beginnings. Social education has taken root in the University system in India. It has the potential to think through its future and forge ahead, its destiny clearly linked to the destiny of the nation itself. Some important challenges to Social work education in the region that needs immediate attention are discussed below:

Social Work’ as a Profession

The word ‘social work’ is not new to the region. Every politicians, local leader, community leader or someone who works for the people are known as Social Workers or so they claim to be. Interestingly, the layman’s perception is located at such a level accepting the terminology to apply to everyone who is socially engaged. In this context, Social Work as a profession is yet to receive an acceptance and thus remains unknown to most people of the region. To note Nagpaul (1967), he argued that “As the existing system of education is largely unrelated to Indian conditions, social work education needs a radical change and drastic reconstruction”. In the report of National Network of Schools of Social work for Quality Enhancement of Social Work Education in India, the report positions Social Work as a Profession in north-east as suffering from being fully developed pertaining to a lack of awareness and understanding of the social work profession by other professionals. Social workers are generally considered ‘sidekicks of politicians’. Societal recognition of social work as a profession in the region is minimal as people think that social work is synonymous with cleaning roads, drains and markets or running projects etc. There is lack of a any regulatory body as well as an active professional and educator’s forum. Therefore an accepted criterion/ framework for setting the standards of social work education in the region remains vague and non-existent. Though the number of Social Work programmes is seeing a increase there is a need to streamline Professional Methods, Values, Ethics that helps the profession qualify as one. Mass awareness both at the micro and macro level, career guidance, orientation and also involvement of the Government agencies is a strategy that can be adopted by each of the educational institutions both at the state and regional level. As compared to other regions of India, Social work still needs to be defined in the process of the contextual reality of the region. Currently there are many ‘drop-outs’ and ‘blind-out’ students who enrol in social work courses just because it is new with promises of job opportunities after graduation.

Curriculum

Most social work curriculum needs to respond to social realities of the region without sacrificing the minimal core of social work education whilst capturing the dynamism of the local realities. Discussion on the same veers to the argument that most of the curriculum in the region follow a ‘copy and paste’ curriculum with least contextual reflexivity making it relevant to the north-eastern region which has its own unique and complex environment.

The profession of social work today needs to adopt a more radical approach. There have been debates in India arguing for a shift in the paradigm and approaches in social work education from a remedial focus to a more emancipatory development thrust. Social work education in India should be tailored to respond to the needs of the majority suffering population and not merely to a peripheral group (Bodhi, 2011). Most of the institutes in the region offer generic social work without much specialisation. Looking at the diverse nature of the realities, there is a need for specialisation that allows more efficaious and deeper understanding. Specialisation of the course can be based on organisational / sectoral conceptions such as Community Development, Health, Social Entrepreneurship, Counselling, Governance, Management of Non-profit Organisation and Peace and Conflict. This will not only equipped the students better in a particular thematic area but will also equip him/her with greater degree of expertise which will enable him/her to deliver more effectively in the field.

Field Work

Field work is one of the important components in Social work education. Currently the debate on what field should be and on what ideological and perspectives should one positioned the field is yet to take place because of the challenges at hand faced by the Institutions with regards to placement of students for fieldwork in organisations in the region. Supervisors who are qualified are amissed and there are very few agencies in north-east which have trained social workers for student’s supervision. Therefore most organisations lack an understanding about the fieldwork component in social work training with some demanding money for placements of students in their organisations. Besides this, local political and social conditions in the region as well as geographical terrains, long distances and other impediments hamper fieldwork placements. The need to establish linkages with schools, hospitals, and government departments apart from NGOs so that students can be placed for fieldwork in these settings is also an area that needs to be worked at.

To tackle these impediments it is recommended that block field work for students become more feasible. This structure of field work is currently being followed by TISS Guwahati campus. On the other hand, while there are many organisations within the region, yet due to the lack of trained social workers in the organisation, there are difficulties to find supervisor. Thus there is a need for social work faculty to play a greater role in guiding students in the field by visiting the field work organisations regularly with intention to also make organisations aware about the supervisory process.

Placement

With 500-600 graduates a year passing out from the region the challenge of placements is major concern for social work institutes. To add to this challenge further, most of the Institutions are private or affiliated to some University making the fees charge for the course very high. Some student take student loans from the bank and even some institution provide study loan for their students. However the numbers of recruiters for social work students is quite low. It is observed that most of the social work graduates are absorbed mostly in government projects like NRHM, NRLM, and some national and international NGOs. Few of graduates are absorb in teaching profession. Very few numbers are working in grass roots organisation, small NGOs and Community Based Organisation (CBOs) with small financial remuneration. Many social work graduates have also left their jobs due to low salaries and dissatisfaction with work. The question now is will the region be able to provide jobs in another two- three years for over 1500 Social work graduates? This is a major challenge for the profession and only time will tell. Nevertheless there is tremendous scope for work in the region for Entrepreneurship and Research rather than focusing only on market-driven and high paying NGOs. In this context, employability of Social work graduates should be conceived beyond market-driven or government jobs.

Apart from the challenges and issues that are discussed above there is also a need for networking among Social work educators towards sharing learnings and challenges through seminars and consultation in order to enhance the quality of social work education in the region. It is generally notedamong educators that the quality of teachers is poor, lacking experience thus impacting pedagogy and teaching. Little research is done by the faculty with least publication due to lack of competence plus excessive burden (skewed teacher-student ratio). This creates pther difficulties affecting student’s research guidance.

Conclusion

As noted by Saldanha (2008) Professional social workers in training offer a significant ray of hope in the face of darkness. If they are to be an important agency contributing to major social transformation, it is relevant that they be exposed to the basic causes of the darkness through a relatively comprehensive theory that has ideological and practice implications. North East today is faced with many challenges from rapid development, ethnic conflict, state and non-state conflict, unemployment, insurgencies and problem of governance. Social work in the region is a new. While showing rapid growth it is also necessary to seriously reflect and introspect its role in producing agents of change. Given the complexity of the region and the sudden increase of Social Work Institutions in the region, the direction for social work education and its educators should be to deepen itself to its context and build a new liberatory practice paradigm that will nurture students to respond to the social, political and economic realities brought about by complex and dynamic regional realities.

Notes:

The data presented in the table is collected from interaction with the faculty of respective Institutions/Universities and also information available in the official website.

References:

Bodhi, S.R. Professional Social Work Education in India: A Critical View from the Periphery (Discussion Note), Indian Journal of Social Work Vol.72 (2), 2011, p.289-300

Desai, A. S. (1985).Foundations of Social Work Education in India and some Issues, Indian Journal of Social Work Vol.46 (1), p.41-57

Gore M S (2011): Social Work and Social Work Education, Rawat Publications, New Delhi

Mehta, B. (1952).Historical Background of Social Work in India. Indian Journal of Social Work , Vol.13

(1). p.1-14.

Moorthy, M. (1961). Contemporary Fields of Professional Social Work in India. Indian Journal of Social Work , Vol.22 (1), p.65-68.

Nagpaul, H. (1967): Sillemmas of Social Work Education in India, Indian Journal of Social Work, 28(3), 269-284

Rao, V (2012): Political Context of Social Work, Indian Journal of Dalit and Tribal Social Work Vol.1 No.2 pp.14 to 34,

Botcha, R (2012): Problems and Challenges for Social Work Education In India: Some Recommendations, International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, Volume 1, Issue 3,

Saldanha.D.(2008). Towards a Conceptualization of Social Action Within Social Work: Teaching Social

Action as a Dialogue Between Theoretical Perspectives and Between Theory and Practice. Indian Journal of Social Work , Vol.69 (2), p.111-137.

Siddiqui, H.Y. (2001):Social Wrok Education: Some Unresolved Curriculum Issues, Indian Journal of Social Work, 62(3), pp 535-553

Thomas, G (2010): Origin and Development of Social Work in India, School of Social Work Indira Gandhi National Open University , Maidan Garhi, New Delhi

2013: Report of Consultation on Social Work Education, North East Zone, TISS Guwahati

2013: Report of National Network of Schools of Social Work for Quality Enhancement of Social Work Education in India, TISS, Mumbai