Community’s Role for Marginalised Children

Abstract

This article discusses the role of the community in the development of socio-economically marginalised children. There are several government schemes and civil society efforts for their upliftment. There is further need to critically analyse researches done with a distinct political stance which either seek to manage the marginalised or to ‘empower’ them. Such policies are simply management techniques and are not really a quest for the actual empowerment of these communities. Most of the research are carried from the perspective of a ‘deficit model’ perspective and not with an unprejudiced perspective of ‘reaching out’.

The article draws from three qualitative field studies, with different settings of marginalised children in Delhi-NCR to argue for an empathy-based model for researching the underprivileged. The empirical argument is further strengthened by insights drawn from Pestalozzi and Savitri Bai Phule’s work with the community. While these action-oriented researches seek to underscore the importance of the work for marginalised sections, we also draw from Dewey’s idea of democratic education that insists upon the schools’ role and responsibility to involve marginalised sections.