The Case for Academic Social Responsibility

The job description of an academic ranges from being an educator, mentor, and innovator to a physician or an engineer. Most academics do not transcend the boundaries of the classroom, lab, or clinic and stay away from contributing towards community development activities unless their field of research or the professional duty takes them to a community or a satellite clinic. The perpetuation of dissociation between professional expertise and community outreach activities was not realized until recently when the honorable PM tried to heighten the civic sense among public on October 2, 2014. He role-modelled by taking his broom to the Delhi streets and began clearing the litter. Soon other senior functionaries followed. He appealed to the public to dedicate 2 hours each week towards community sanitation in an ‘ice bucket challenge’ fashion, inspiring them to upload the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures on MyGov.in, Facebook, and so on. He obviously didn’t want to specify the academics or their Institutions, on whom lay the great responsibility, but he did challenge the nine important celebrities exhorting them to aim for cleaner India. The Ministry of Science and Technology followed the cue and soon came out with a circular asking the research institutions to engage in social outreach activities. This included teaching kids in socially excluded localities. There were no specific official circulars imploring the academics to undertake any such activity as it was natural to be overwhelmed by the government reminder for aesthetic and cleaner environment. However, institutions, as per official requirement, secured a formal ‘pledge’ to keep the surroundings clean, undertaken through the heads of organizations. It was immediately taken up to ground zero by the faculty and students of Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research. The responsibility they carry continues unabated. 4.5 years later, when a research paper on the subject was being written, the idea of ‘academic social responsibility’ was coined by a senior colleague and coauthor so that this activity could inspire others to follow suit as this might be helpful in scaling the practice and consequently curbing the infections related to the lack of sanitation.

Why Science Educators and Academics Can Inspire Community Work

Professionally qualified social workers and other social reformers are often seen working with communities. The science educators and their students are missing from these places, partly because the current research curriculum does not include this important element of soft skill development and partly because they wear a condescending attitude. Since the scientific community is looked upon with awe and respect its role modeling in community development, their role-modelling can scale up the campaign. The experience and eloquence of academics drawn from the Chandigarh institution collaborative group, the CRIKC, can be effectively used to spearhead the public health outreach campaigns for cleaner Chandigarh. This can be done by allocating @2 hrs per week for ‘litter pick up’ campaigns, led by supervisors and their students. These academics from PGI, Panjab University, NIPER, IISER, IITR, CSIO, GMCH, etc., are best positioned to educate the street gatherings about the importance of hygiene and sanitation, and its link with health and diseases by themselves cleaning the area. This can further escalate the Clean India campaign. A spirit of academic social responsibility can be formally introduced for various PhD programs among CRIKC institutes.

As an example, after the neuroscience professor and his students descended on the streets 4.5 years back, people and patient’s attendants spontaneously gathered to listen to them and to follow them in their weekly litter pick-up activities, clicking pictures and at times clearing the litter spread across the campus. The campus used to be replete with mud holes, garbage, and scattered plastic bags and plates. In those days, there were not many dustbins or signposts in the campus. When this group of academics descended on the campus streets and wrote to the institute authorities, taking turns for leading the campaign, week after week, the litter comprising food plates, bidis, and gutkas disappeared from the campus. The shiny steel signposts and swanky dustbins replaced them. Many research lab heads, students and nursing staff, visiting professors, community heroes, and alumni also joined the campaign in these intervening 4.5 years. Despite blind criticism, coupled with general dislike for litter, the campaign continued uninterrupted, without break. By the time the new director joined, things were in order—the mud holes had been replaced by green lawns, and littered plastic bags by plants, flowers, and signposts. The institute was later also recognized for championing the cause of cleanliness.

Butterfly Effect

A study by research scholars of Panjab University examined the “before” and “after” effects of Clean India activity at PGI. Inspired by the regularity of the students and their supervisor descending to the campus, week after week, and uploading the pictures of activity on MyGov.in, a team from Panjab University carried out a masked survey randomly asking the laymen in the campus about “who were the people” carrying out the litter-pick activity and “what was the impact noticed.” They sampled about 100 people and found that there was good awareness among patients and their attendants about this activity. In a population of migrating patients, sustaining the Clean India campaign was more than expected. Slowly, the dustbins began to appear next to various rehris (roadside stall) outside the campus. Even the place where daily rationing of langars (community meal) used to be held wore a cleaner look. The area which was full of maggots soon became cleaner and hygienic. A large garbage dumping container was also installed next to the langar area by the municipal authorities. The frequently urinated wall outside PGI’s Gate No. 1 soon began to appear cleaner. Subsequently, the vendors moved to the adjacent area outside Gate No. 1, accompanied by rebuilding of the bus stop to the other side of the road, further reducing the litter generated. By this time, a professor of PGI had launched a vendor sanitation program. This had a cascade effect in the immediate community as the vendors, who had moved to the adjacent venue. For some time, they began to wear gloves and aprons.

Change Within

The Clean India campaign brought an invisible transformation in the academic life of participants with qualitative change in attitude among students and faculty. Most students reported a surging feeling of service and a growing urge to relate their research work to social benefit. Many participants were humbled by the poor who lived on the streets. They were able to appreciate the work done by ragpickers and speak to street gatherings, inspiring them to carry on with a spirit of service and compassion. However, a few continued to be condescending and remained irregular participants in this voluntary scheme. Others agreed that this activity was a great stress buster, especially after a grulling lab experiment had failed. Many even brought their family members and kids on days that marked 50, 100, 150, 200 weeks of Clean India activity. They felt that the interaction of academics with general public boosted their morale and self-confidence, and lent a sense of meaning to life, often amiss in academic life.

Challenges and Future Perspectives

A CRIKC charter for mandating academic social responsibility in the research training can enable the institutions to lead the public health initiatives. Academics work in groups and their students are important members of knowledge generation besides driving its translation. The community outreach activities provide the necessary substrate for knowledge translation for social benefit. As students are creative frontrunners of any academic activity, many of them were quick to make weekly outreach rosters to bring structure to this voluntary activity. A few of them published two editions of illustrative comic “Magical Broom” and “Magical Broom Returns” that described personal experiences and challenges from this activity. The sanitation workers felt elated at seeing academics doing their job and appeared more accepted by the intellectual class. A few of them found such outreach activity imposing and often skipped it and later left the group. Even though academics are expected to be cognitively unbiased and evidence-based in their approach, a few remained struck to a certain ideology subtly justifying nonengagement in the litter pick-up campaign. They reasoned that this was the duty of sanitation workers and that it affected their research work. For them, it was a waste of time (@2hrs/week). For those few, this activity had roots in nationalistic or presumably a right wing ideology which they did not adhere to. Ironically, science fails where outreach begins.