Social sense for children

This is the era of development, India is aiming to become an economic superpower.World attention is on us. Our GDP growth is one of the highest in the world. So as an Indian we have every reason to be proud of our nation. But is this all we need? Does economic growth, literacy, stable democracy etc ensure a prosperous society in the future?

Society and its stake holders have a number of responsibilities on its shoulders of which the most important one creating a responsible and efficient new generation which can take over the reins from the present.We have a human resource development ministry which sets up such goals, but where we are losing the directions..

Every day our media bring in to us more and more news of murders, atrocities, thefts, public nuisance, violence , communal divides etc. What is the cause of such wide spread incidents? How is the mindset of the younger generation of the society influenced by such activities.

Family is the first school. No one can expect a father without social sense to preach his child societal values. Hence the upliftment must start with families.

The thoughts that prompted me to write this article is an incident that took place some time before.When standing along the roadside with a family friend's son who was still at his kinder garten, a gentleman clad in traditional Muslim attire was passing by , the young boy cried out an offensive nick name for a Muslim. The embarrassed man just gave a smile and walked away. The child being brought up by well educated parents who were supposed to have good social values, I was rather shocked and surprised by the incident. So what promted the child for such a behavior? School, parents, or any other senior's mentoring!! The young generation is trained to identify people based on religion and ofcourse some hatred accompanies the training.

Sorry if you heard me wrong but education and money will not bring social sense. It is from family and society..I have friend who gets a small pay packet just sufficient enough to meet his family needs but he makes sure that he keeps some money for some genuine charity (not temples and churches).

Its not just people but animals also belong to society. I had (have) a hypocrisy that I like dogs,but used to complain that the stray dogs around are causing menace by tilting over waste bins,jumping into premises and dirtying etc.I never fed them, this was before my marriage.After marriage my wife who like dogs, keep aside a part of the food and to feed to dogs. So the result no more menace, dogs are disciplined..dogs cause menace for food..if food available no menace. So I lacked the social sense and vision my wife possesed.

There is an emergency need to fill in the minds of every individual with a deep sense of social committment. But sometimes this social committment is misinterpreted.

While on a public procession of the student organisation I was a part, in the main road a few number of small school children marching along with us.I asked them if they know about the orgnaisation; forget the principle,not even one knew the full form of the abbreviated name. As we passed by we could find the school boys pulling down the road divider blocks , two wheelers and damaging public property. This was not part of the agenda we had. On my questioning the deed the leaders of the march replied that these boys are our future and should be trained to be highly spirited!! This is our spirit??

The children who are trained that spirit of a socially committed organisation is to become public nuisance will eventually become a social menace only.Just common sense. Hence it is very necessary that true sense of politics be taught to children. This also should happen from the family. At this stage I have the personal opinion that organisational politics must be strict taboo for students..! Its the need of the society. Let them be part of National Service scheme, NCC, Youth Redcross etc.

Let the family and education bring in more sense of social committment and cultural needs.

Here is the role of Governement. Government need to make it's social welfare more family oriented and not social class oriented.Indian government evaluates the social classes on the basis of caste or religion. But this is not always true.In rural areas the caste based social classes are fast disappearing.In Urban areas this is rare.

The government need to emphasise on

• Providing more social sense than mere knowledge injection. Make it strict for school and college students to be active participant of atleast one social organisation.Even compulsary military training similar to developed nations is fine.
• Categorising society based on the new social classes and not the age old caste/religion based categories. 
• Politics as a strict "Adults only" practice.Let children read history and theoritical politics only.If they are interested in politics let them practice or announce their affiliation after they reach voting age.
• Religion and religious sentiments must be downplayed. A new generation who are less bothered about religion are less likely to be taken away in the divisive sense of religion or caste.