There was a time when social development work was not considered a serious career option. Long regarded as a low-paying, though soul-satisfying profession, concentrating on the underprivileged in society, social development work has today broken free from these shackles.

Today with increased awareness of the need for both social and economic uplift of the underdeveloped and the fall-out of the natural disasters striking the country, such as the recent tsunami strike, the Orissa cyclone, the Gujarat earthquake and riots, this important aspect of social work has been assigned a new meaning. Moreover, with almost 300 million people living below the poverty line and 70 per cent having little or no access to safe drinking water, sewage, medical facilities and education, the scope of work in this area is indeed enormous.

The Work

Development work is the art and the science of bringing various resources to bear on individuals, groups and community needs by the application of scientific methods, to help people help themselves. The tasks essentially involve identifying community problems such as lack of drinking water, or housing, unemployment, poor or inadequate medical and healthcare facilities, among other things. This could cover minority, gender or caste-group issues; initiating remedial action by influencing social policy or creating awareness; mobilising resources and monitoring their utilisation.

Entry

As the work is so varied, trained development workers can specialise in different areas of work. Often specialists in the various fields, such as teachers, doctors, public-health specialists, drinking-water experts, sociologists, social workers, psychologists and others opt to work with development agencies. Students and people from different youth organisations often volunteer for a career in developmental work, even without formal training.

But to be effective and productive in this field, some specialised training may be necessary. The tsunami victims, today, require not only volunteers to help them reconstruct their physical and economic lives, but specialists such as doctors to provide medical care, civil engineers to plan and construct alternative housing, disaster management experts to mobilise resources and psychologists to help survivors handle the traumas many are undergoing.

While most government organisations and NGOs prefer to take in trained social workers, international organisations look for postgraduates from specialised fields with at least five years’ experience in their areas of expertise.

PANAJI: The solution for the eradication of poverty in the country is located in the expansion of gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of up to 15%, according to experts.

“The government and other agencies, several matings. Your task (poverty eradication), it does, once it is high GDP”, Ajay Shah, Senior Fellow, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, explained.

In an interview with journalists on the sidelines of a conference, ‘Samriddhi’, organised jointly by the Institute for the Management of Goa and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said Shah of India, poverty is sharply declining.

“The number of people living below the poverty line, has been, since 1993, a decrease.”

The experts attending the two-day conference felt that the villages have a lot of positive changes during the year.

“This is mainly due to infrastructure development. Villages are connected. The right image is now quite different from what it was 15 years,” Rajnikant Patel, Chairman and MD, Bombay Stock Exchange observed.

The micro-finance experts, participation in the meeting, the arguments in favour of a strong integration that growth will be problems in the rural sector.

“The basic infrastructure is not accessible to everyone. There are more cell phones than in the country, bank accounts, NV Ramana, CEO Basix India, a group of financial services and technical assistance, said.

He stressed a balance between the industrialized countries and agricultural growth.