Majumdar, Manabi and Rana, Kumar
(2016)
Aspiring public solutions to
public deficiencies.
Learning Curve (25).
pp. 30-32.
Abstract
We come together for various social purposes. As
Tagore ruefully remarked on the self-destructive
events in Bengal during 1934-40, ‘People here do
not combine to build up anything bit by bit, but they
flock together to enjoy the unholy glee of pulling
down what has already been built’. That it is within
the realm of the possible to imagine a counter-
current of collective striving for constructive social
objectives is the point that is pursued in this brief
note. Drawing on the accounts of quotidian efforts
and experiences of school teachers, anganwadi
workers, health workers, and of several ‘street-level’
education and health officials that were presented
in a recent workshop in Santiniketan on ‘School
Health and the Health of the School’ organized by
Pratichi (India) Trust, this sketchy report seeks to
demonstrate the willingness and resolve of a group
of people – people like us who do not claim to be
having super-natural qualities – to cooperate and
aspire for public solutions to public deficiencies.Two usual doubts are likely to surface at this point
against the promises of collective pursuit of public
values: can we scale up such initiatives? And can we
fit them within the ‘parameters of the possible’?
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