The history of voluntarism in India

Essay aus dem Jahr 2014 im Fachbereich Soziale Arbeit / Sozialarbeit, , Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Voluntary action may be cruel to the marginalized group who even fail to earn their daily bread. It is the main reason of the contemporary decline in voluntarism due to growing poverty, unemployment, frustration and alleviation among youth. Several views of different school of thoughts have been expressed on the voluntarism. One school of thought criticizes voluntary as a tax on poor, especially in case of women who are already burden with a lot of responsibilities. This school fees involvement in voluntary work should offer personal benefits in form of acquirement of skill and experiences and says voluntary action should be a preparatory ground for the paid employment. Voluntary is a cost effective way of providing social and welfare services but not cost free to flourish voluntarism requires necessary infrastructures and institutional mechanism to facilitate the mobilization of popular support and engagement of volunteers in appropriate task and responsibilities. The decline in civic engagements among young raises fears regarding the feature of voluntary action in the country. It needs steps to educate youths in values of active citizen. Further, voluntary action is also hindered due to lack of recognition of their work. Many volunteers from bigger institutions wants the lime lights while local volunteers do a lot of hard work in addressing the local problem which no one recognizes at the national level.

Dr Ravinder Singh(1965-) is now working as Associate Professor & Head, Department of Medical Anthropology, Institute of Human behaviuor and Allied Sciences Hospital, Delhi. Dr Singh has been Assistant Director(Child Care)(1996-2006) priory to joining the current Position. He teaches medical anthropology now to MD(Psychiatry), DM(Neurology) and M.Phil Clinical psychology Students. He has more than 30 research papers, three e-books, co-authored a book on Handedness and gender Differences in Spatial Abilities and four chapters in the edited books.He has completed two research projects on Epilepsy and social stigma. As Assistant Director(Child care) Dr Singh has been trainer on child Rights Issues as per UN Convention(1989) to GO, VOs, trainer to Juvenile Administration System to Delhi Police Training College, Delhi and HIPA, Gurgoan,Haryana. He Has oganised several workshops on CRC, Social policy and Legislation and Institutional and Non-Institutional care of Children, Adoption and its policies. Besides he has organised State Level Seminar in several state of the Country. He also conducted the Studies on Girl Child Adoption and Evaluation of Child Marriage Restrain Act in Gujarat in particular to Child Marriage Prevention Officer(CMPO).