Guwahati, Jan. 22: Concerned about your fundamental rights, how about knowing your fundamental duties? The Preamble to our Constitution starts with "We, The People of India"..., but how many of us actually follow it every day?
These are some of the myriad questions that were asked during a programme, Samvidhan Live - The Jagrik Project, involving young people as they tried to understand the Constitution while reflecting on their roles within its framework.
WAY (We Are Young) Foundation, a city-based youth-led organisation, had engaged a group of college students here to help understand the Constitution better through a set of tasks and activity-based interactions as part of the project that was held simultaneously across the country since the last week of November.
The project will culminate on Republic Day in New Delhi where representatives of 23 youth-based organisations across 15 states will congregate and share their experiences as well as the findings of a survey on citizens' understanding of the Constitution, conducted in their respective states. New Delhi-based organisation ComMutiny - The Youth Collective initiated the project through its local partners.
"The Constitution is the supreme law of the country but very few citizens understand what it entails. So this project is all about executing the framework of the Constitution at an individual level by observing spaces, real-life incidents, and behaviour around us and by executing our rights and duties which we often violate or do not exercise as we are oblivious of them," Indrajit Sinha, director of WAY Foundation, told The Telegraph today.
A board game where a dice is rolled on a board against a set of questions regarding an aware citizenry was one of the activities for the participants.
"An aware citizenry is the basis of an inclusive society and that's exactly what the project is all about. This campaign is very important for us as it helps youths understand the meaning of active citizenship and leadership through tasks and games against the mundane lectures in a classroom set-up," Sinha said.
"Here in Guwahati, we had engaged 20 people (called jagriks - aware citizens) from different colleges, mostly students who reached out to a few hundred citizens through a survey on their understanding of the Constitution. The findings of the surveys conducted by all the organisations will be presented before President Pranab Mukherjee on Republic Day. Two representatives of the organisations will meet in New Delhi on Tuesday when the project will culminate," he said.
Neeta Basnet, one of the winners of the programme, said, "I got a task under right to freedom of religion and I had to identify three discriminatory practices in my religion and form arguments of why they should be reformed."
