India – Civic Learning 2.0

I haven’t been to India for a couple of years, I think it’s fairly well known I don’t like flying and despite my love of De Montfort University’s Square Mile India programme, the food and the politics of the country, I cannot face an 11-hour journey including an internal flight to Ahmedabad, Gujarat. That said, my trips to India have impacted my life, I have seen extreme poverty, people living under questionable religious order (the caste system), beautiful colours, interesting faces and millions of people enjoying another level of spirituality I could not reach no matter how much drink and drugs I consumed on a journey to truly find myself. I can live with the fact I’m not George Harrison but it certainly feels like India does effect people in a way visits to other countries do not. Sure you can see poverty in London, New York, Berlin, and the bottom of your street, but few comeback from a holiday and say ‘that was truly life-changing’. Yet people who come back from India do, so much so it’s becoming something of a cliche. When the brilliant folks in ADH at DMU said they wanted to a research exhibition about India in The Gallery, I thought this was my chance to lance my boil and actually investigate whether students volunteering in India was truly life-changing or just a cliché. I am in the process of writing a paper on this, but as the exhibition closed last week I wanted to share the story so far and I’m happy for an academic collaboration to get the paper into shape for a future journal submission. I also created a podcast with Chris, Kainaath and Lucy from one of the focus groups that you can hear here:

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I looked out of my hotel window – five, six, seven dogs ran through the street, a gentle warm January breeze tossed dozens of kites caught in a tree and cars continued to peep their horns loudly at 2am. An old man walked by eating ice cream and the lights had finally gone out on a nearby slum. Ahmedabad, India, had given me an insomniac’s welcome that was far from restful. The stiffest drink in the hotel bar, a can of Diet Coke, was not going to help me fall asleep so I sat staring at the road below, reflecting on my day.I was thinking about that cliche of Indian life – where extreme poverty and wealth live side by side.

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This blog:

I’m Mark Charlton, Associate Director of Public Engagement at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. I’m passionate about universities using Service-Learning, community-based learning, civic learning, the scholarship of engagement, learning-linked volunteering and all the other ways we describe students sharing their skills and knowledge beyond the campus. I encourage all staff and students to embed the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals into their work. I also lead the United Nations Academic Impact Initiative Global Academic Hub for SDG 16 at DMU. I am a PhD Scholar, researching the impacts of civic engagement on students’ political participation.

Tag: India

Student Volunteering in India: Life-changing or just a cliché?

Public Engagement blog: Attempts to break a cycle of poverty in India