Transforming Social Work Education in India: Integrating Human Rights

Abstract

India is one of the signatories to the UDHR. Its written constitution provides a unique combination of justiciable and non-justiciable rights. In India, the human rights movement and its intellectual discourse have been put to the test due to the specific complexities of the political processes in the country as well as due to the distinct historical, social, and cultural situations in Indian states. The residual traditional norms of caste, class and gender inequality, poverty, lack of education, and awareness are major hindrances in popularizing and internalizing human rights and making it into a mass movement. There is growing demand for social workers to adopt the human rights approach, particularly with increasing social and economic inequalities, poverty, religious and civil conflicts, disasters, and displacements. In this paper, the authors present a brief history of India’s response to the human rights conventions and treaties and the current status of human rights practices. Social work education is a very important entry point for human rights practice and protection of the rights of the poor, marginalized, and the most disadvantaged people in the country. How Indian social work education has tailored its curricula, research, and field practice to embrace the human rights perspective is discussed and debated. While there are several challenges and differences in social work perspectives in the education of social workers in India, it is now well acknowledged that collective analysis and solidarity will facilitate the transformation of social work education in India into an effective discipline with a human rights perspective.