Land Acquisitions for Industry: A Critical Area for Social Work Intervention
The problem of industrialization leading to displacement is by no means new. Pre-industrialize England gives us the earliest instance of development leading to large-scale displacement in 17th century. Sir, Thomas More’s Utopia and later by Poliny in his book The Great Transformation pointed out how forcedly evicted famers turned into beggars and thieves. India is now facing same problem where growing population and globalised industry is creation pressure on land. It cannot follow what England did since India is a fully democratic county. India has been practicing village level autonomy for decades through Local self-governance (LSG) but now series of violent conflicts are taking place when central or state government is trying to acquire land for industry. The problem lies in the government approach to acquire land without negotiating with the stakeholders and LSG. A comparative study of the whole process of land acquisition for companies like TATA and Jindal, demonstrate that the latter was much peaceful because it included LSG in decision-making and collective bargaining. There is greater felt need of Critical-radical Social Work intervention in framing social policy of land acquisition process in highly populated countries like India and China. As in India, they are highly successful in understanding dynamics of local socio-politics as a key government agent of Strengthening Rural Decentralization. An alternative development model for a over populated country could be turning part of its economy to knowledge based industry or to small scale industries as they requires less land and they are more labour intensive; towards a sustainable development.
Learning life skills in schools: Positive Psychosocial Environment (PPE) at the formative stages, leading to the development of healthy personalities with reference to India
In India, it is estimated that 15 million people suffer from serious mental disorder and 30 million from mild/moderate mental health issues. For every 0.3 million there is only one professional and this figure may be lower in the context of rural-urban demographic features. Recently, there has been eight-fold increase in budget allocation for the National Mental Health Programme for the Tenth Five-Year Plan, that will account for more than 20 million US$(2002-2007 as per National Institute of Health & Family Welfare, GOI, 2009/ However, the budget outlays are based on the prediction and not on actual figures for it is predicted that the 11%(figure during 1990) of the disease burden will become 15% by 2010 (WHO, 2003); with a population of 1.2 billion, the estimate is huge.
A child spend at least four to six waking hours in school interacting with teachers and peers. Schools can become the settings for running a sustained programme inducing behavioral changes. Importantly, the impact of these programmes can be assessed in qualitative and/or quantitative terms indicating the effectiveness of the programme/intervention us providing opportunity to design more effective strategies.
A Positive Psychosocial Environment (PPE) at school can be advantageous in terms of mental health and well-being of young people (WHO 2003c). Positive reinforcement in the areas of subjective experience (happiness, optimism) and positive personality traits (courage, cooperation, Sociability, self-contentment, creativity, morality, aspirational, inspirational and wisdom) can be intensely effective in cultivating civility and nurture responsible citizens for the future.
Effective life skills programme will provide models of and practice in critical thinking skills, problem solving/decision making skills (learning to know), skills for internal locus of control, managing stress and feelings (learning to be) and intra-personal communication skills (learning to live together), as well as the hands-on skills (learning to do) (Radja, Hoffmann, Bakshi, 2003) . Careful implementation of the strengths perspective of social work will stimulate untapped resources of capacities, energy, courage, fortitude and other assets. If strengths are recognized and used in change process, they elevate student’s motivation and potential for bringing about positive change.
Practice based on psychodynamic theories, behavioral therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy and many other associate theories/approaches of social work can be used in school by educator. Thus, preventive measures through application of certain approaches of positive-psychology right from the formative years in conjunction with organized school curriculum will be a more effective long- term goal than an attempt at equitable distribution of mental-health professional, given the demographic divides and the economic situation in the country.
