Social Work Bulletin

Social Work

University of Kashmir

Online ISSN: 2582-7790

The era of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation brought in some unexpected changes in the working of government institutions, private sector and civil society organisations in India. The concept of accountability which has become the central tenet of good governance, became increasingly important for all sectors, and non-government organisations being no exception. The role of NGOs in India has evolved over the years and their number has increased dramatically, they have taken an important role in decision making and global governance but at the same time these NGOs are being questioned for their lack of accountability and transparency to their stakeholders including beneficiaries, staff and state. In this paper NGO accountability in India has been examined and an attempt has been made to highlight the issues of blacklisting, de-licensing, banning and impact of FCRA on NGOs in India and the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.

Persons with Disabilities (PwD) are among the vulnerable people and stakeholders of welfare schemes seeking equality before law and opportunity in matters of public enrolment. The study is aimed to assess disability welfare schemes awareness, accessibility and availing levels of persons with physical disabilities and evaluate the welfare schemes satisfaction of persons with physical disabilities (PwD) of Hyderabad district of Telangana, India. The WSS (Welfare Schemes Satisfaction) analysis using self-anchored scale, consisting of 60 items on a four-point Likert scale with 0.944 Cronbach’s Alpha reliability was developed. Further, the relationship between Welfare schemes Awareness, Accessibility, Availing (independent variable) and WSS (dependent variable) of PwD was statistically significant and relationship of each dimension of Welfare Schemes (WS) and WSS was also found non spurious. The findings argue for more focus on awareness, accessibility and availing of welfare schemes for the empowerment of PwD through disability welfare schemes.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir has diverse population consisting of various ethnic groups. Among them Tibetans community which is primarily living in the Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir has been always considered special because of their unique cultural identity which they have been able to preserve for almost 60 years in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The community requires to be investigated for various social issues like gender discrimination. Tibetan community though Muslims have not able to over a period mingle with the dominant Kashmiri Muslim population. Given the nature of Tibetan community which is considered as very religious and conservative, the issue of gender discrimination calls for a thorough study. The present paper attempts to provide a picture of the patterns and areas of life of women which are affected by the issue of gender discrimination among the Tibetan community living in the Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Vitiligo has a special significance in children, adding to their psychological distress during the formative years. Skin illnesses can have a negative impact on ones self-esteem and social interactions, especially during the vulnerable childhood years. Since vitiligo typically affects exposed body regions, the presence of such lesions might cause severe psychological distress in children. An enormous stigma is associated with the disease in the Kashmiri culture. The aim of the current study is to understand the beliefs about causation and the psychosocial impact associated with the disease, particularly on children, in Kashmir. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with children affected with the condition. Purposive sampling was employed to identify the participants. Each interview was recorded and transcripts were analyzed to identify significant issues and concerns. Participants had a wide range of concerns regarding their disease such as physical appearance, progression of white patches onto exposed skin and the whole body, psychosocial trauma, social restriction, stigmatization and ostracisation.

In India, cooperatives have a history that spans more than a century. The idea of collaboration and cooperative activity were common in various regions of our country even before formal cooperative institutions were created through the passage of legislation. Village Organisations frequently collaborated to build enduring assets like community tanks or village woodlands. There have been examples of groups combining their resources, such as food grains after a harvest to lend to less fortunate group members before the next harvest, or periodically collecting modest monetary contributions to give to group members, i.e., Chit Funds, This paper explores the emergence of cooperative organisations in India as well as their contribution to economic growth. This study analyses the phenomenal rise of cooperatives in India. The assertion that "the country progresses with the growth of the cooperatives" is attempted to be justified. The first part of the paper defines cooperative concepts and their evolution. The second section lists numerous cooperative benefits and discusses how these benefits contribute to the uplift of the population who are socially and economically disadvantaged. In the third section of the paper, some well-known cooperative movements in India are discussed. A few problems faced by cooperative groups are described in the fourth part.

Incarceration severely affects the families associated with the imprisoned individual. The families while maintaining contact with the prisoner experience the secondary effects of imprisonment. The families face social as well as economic burden of having a loved one inside the prison spaces. Using semi-structured interviews with the family members, belonging to different families, we try to understand the social and economic challenges faced by them as a result of incarceration of a family member. The paper employs a qualitative methodology to understand the implications of maintaining contact with the incarcerated loved ones. The paper emphasizes on the fact that the effects of incarceration are tremendously bore by families who deal with the worsening of financial situation, loans and mortgages, debts as well as the social challenges post incarceration of a family member. The findings highlight that these families face a significant disadvantage, decrease in social and economic resources and an additional strain for the families who live on the bottom of social scale exacerbating their vulnerabilities.

In Kerala, divorce is still considered a stigma. It affects not only spouses but also their children. This qualitative study explored adolescents' experiences in Kerala in dealing with parental divorce. Participants were 20 adolescents of divorced couples, aged 17 to 19— data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically. The findings show that adolescents felt more helpless due to the parents' divorce, feeling of losing their identity, and blaming their parents. Adolescents 'ability to cope with crises, psychological and financial support from friends and relatives, and the willingness of divorced parents to communicate and assist and act as their parents helped youth to overcome the crisis and lead a everyday life.

Universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene is when the whole community, including people with a disability, elderly, pregnant women, ethnic minorities etc. benefit equally through the Universal access. It will facilitates the participation of persons suffering from disabilities . children with disabilities are unlikely to go school and are more presumably depend on others for their actions. They also strike with the experiences of stigma and discrimination. These experiences act as barriers for being included in community processes which are used to Access to Sanitation, water and Hygiene. People with disabilities in India are in a burden of discrimination based on being a differently abled person. According to global health agency World Health Organisation stats, in globally one out of five people which are living in developing world have a disability of one or other type. There is also evidences of rapidly rising number of accidents, number of people living with one or the other type of disabilities are presumably continue to increase. There is a little documentation of good inclusive practices and policies for water, sanitation and hygiene stakeholder in India, the sector of development is aware that people having disabilities need to be included Unless water, hygiene and sanitation sector reaches and includes people who are most marginalised and include Persons with Disabilities and the Geriatic, then India’s target of universal access to WASH will never be achieved. National Policy in India declared that persons with disabilities are country’s valuable human resource and seeks to create and develop an environment that provides them equal opportunities, protection of their rights and full participation in society. The environment which is barrier free enables them to move safely and freely, and are able to take benefits from the facilities within the built environment.The ultimate goal of barrier free design is to provide an environment that supports independent living and functioning of individuals with limitations so that they can participate fully without assistance, in everyday activities therefore to the maximum extent possible buildings, transportation systems for public use should be made barrier free.

Tourism is one of the leading industries in the world that has kept growing significantly over the years. Due to the large-scale nature of this activity, it has a wide impact on various economies in the developed and developing world. There is a growing awareness of the importance of tourism entrepreneurship but little recognition of its specific operating characteristics. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the various facets of entrepreneurship in the tourism industry and discusses its role in developing the tourism sector in J&K. It also provides some feasible suggestions that can help improve the tourism industry in J&K through entrepreneurial efforts.

This paper takes on disability as a human rights issue and focuses on social model of disability among the different models that are available within the disability literature. The ideas and the consequent United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) that set the stage for social model of disability are being discussed in the paper. The main motive of the paper is to imply that disability discourse has emerged in the Western world and is being used globally without taking into consideration the local needs of other countries where the disability is still being looked at through the mixed lens of individual and societal problem like India. This paper will dig into liberal feminism and through its lens will try to find out the inadequacies in Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD).

The process of feminization of poverty in India is confidentially associated to the cultural and institutional precincts that are having a stoppage on women’s engrossment in financial activity. Challenging gender based disparity prerequisites courageous strides and initiatives by women. This paper evaluates innovative methods adopted by women in Kashmir to examine macro-level developments tangled in land proprietorship in regions where possessing land is an indicator of authority. Exhausting data from 500 women, establish substantial connections between women’s tenancy of land, relationship command, and acceptance of corporeal and psychosomatic vehemence in both rural and urban Kashmir. Overall, the results advocate that when women have property, they accomplish rheostat within their families and other consanguineous and conjugal relations and have very minimal prospectus to experience vehemence.

Courts are considered as one of the fundamental State institutions all over the world, fully backed by the Government of the countries. Meaning thereby that Courts are one of the pillars of the State Authority. In India the performance of the function of providing justice to common people has been since time immemorial vested with the Kings/rulers and at the local levels was taken care of by the village headmen and tribal leaders. The present day Courts and their hierarchy have been established during the British Rule in India and the overall structure of the Courts is more or less the same as has been established by British. The jurisdiction which the Courts exercise encompass mainly the social behavior of the human population. The functioning of the Courts besides being deterrent and punitive have been also reformative and in recent past in addition to the previous legislations many more laws have been enacted for regulating the behavior within a family. The most important one being Domestic Violence Act 2005.

The emergence of psychosocial problems in the valley is a phenomenon which began in the aftermath of the conflict about two decades ago, resulting in a spurt in mental illness and the recent explosive rise of drug abuse (opioids) in the valley; unlike the prevalence of inhalants a decade ago. This article is an attempt to actualize the present enormity of the prevalence of the above issues, and their adverse impact in the populace in the valley. It also raises concerns on emerging problems related to the following  Domestic Violence,  Abuse (emotional/ physical/ sexual),  Suicides and  Gender Equity -a matter commonly overlooked. All the above psychosocial issues are primarily social problems in nature. Unfortunately, too much focus is given on a clinical approach, instead of addressing it from a holistic social perspective. The very term – psychosocial emerges from the psyche (mind) and social (society) and both of these two factors have led to a steep incline in the problems over the past years. More important due to the prolonged stressful conditions leading to erosion in values, a casualty has been the very basic personality of people especially the youth. Today they are caught between the declining family ties and the pressure placed on them by their colleagues. This leads in many instances to insecurity which is carried with them into their adult lives. Any approach in addressing the above will have to be done by local social work professionals who have a vision and compassion along with a willingness to interact with the local community.