Sep 16, 2026 · 33 min · 8 segments
Welcome to a new season of the Social Work Education Podcast, brought to you by the EASSW and the IASSW. Today, we take a look at social work education in India, and we are joined by Professor Bishnu…
Bishnu Mohan DashGuest
Richard IngramHostMichael Vonnegren-LynchHost
And in some ways, 30 minutes doesn't do it justice because there are many complex things there.
I need to go and read some of Vishnu's work to get greater clarity on was this question about whether one can talk about such a singular thing as Indian social work.
And I think, so the idea of this unity of consciousness, it was interesting, I suppose, he did get onto this idea of regionalization, but we don't have time to go into too much depth there, but this idea almost of regional, national, global, which I think is probably to my ears, the way that many parts of the world are thinking about how to sort of challenge previously dominant narratives, introduce more indigenous ones.
But yeah, so I thought that was, Interesting, but it sounds still very complex from what he's saying in terms of the process and the path out of that.
And I think there's a deep... motivation inside him to have social work achieve professional status and recognition and i think it does sound and we know the context of uh of bjp the nationalist party in india we know to get that status you have to be ordained and given that status by those in power and how would you do that they're okay well the indianization is is a way towards that's uh And I think, you know, so there's complicated motivational factors there for sure.
And absolutely, you know, and I think that tension where we didn't really get too much into that tension between, because we know there are people excluded.
And so there are obviously those tensions, and there's always tensions in social work, and there's always people, but it also shows the challenges of doing this decolonizing work as well, and how complicated and how many... variables there are floating around and how to try and at the same time have space and create social work that's uh has that recognition and status and proper pay and conditions and so forth um you know so i think uh there
are um and that kind of proliferation of new projects and new approaches and opportunities for placement um And really sort of, I suppose, diversifying and making the social workers more visible, I guess, in a range of contexts may well be a bit of a route towards professional recognition because I'm thinking of kind of the recent recognition of social work in Nigeria.
Part of the path to that and to be visible to the decision makers in government is to have demonstrable outcomes that the profession could point to and say, this needs to be protected, it needs to be nurtured.
And I wonder if that, I wonder if a by-product of the CSR could be the development of a bank of evidence to say, well, here's what social work can achieve.
And I was also quite intrigued there with the idea and recognizing, because it is a challenge, if he's saying you still at the same time want to have a Western influence on what that means within a curriculum, how to identify what you keep and what you exclude, and how would you go about that process? I mean, that sounds inherently super complex, but he did say there are tests or research projects underfoot to try and do that, to eke out something which would be suitable.
Yeah, and actually that idea of sometimes, I don't know if it's a fair way of describing it, but sometimes when we talk about indigenisation of social work curriculum, we talk about the removal of Western centric ideas.
But that can't be done just by saying, well, that's our, we're comfortable with this.
And in some ways, 30 minutes doesn't do it justice because there are many complex things there.
I need to go and read some of Vishnu's work to get greater clarity on was this question about whether one can talk about such a singular thing as Indian social work.
And I think, so the idea of this unity of consciousness, it was interesting, I suppose, he did get onto this idea of regionalization, but we don't have time to go into too much depth there, but this idea almost of regional, national, global, which I think is probably to my ears, the way that many parts of the world are thinking about how to sort of challenge previously dominant narratives, introduce more indigenous ones.
But yeah, so I thought that was, Interesting, but it sounds still very complex from what he's saying in terms of the process and the path out of that.
And I think there's a deep... motivation inside him to have social work achieve professional status and recognition and i think it does sound and we know the context of uh of bjp the nationalist party in india we know to get that status you have to be ordained and given that status by those in power and how would you do that they're okay well the indianization is is a way towards that's uh And I think, you know, so there's complicated motivational factors there for sure.
And absolutely, you know, and I think that tension where we didn't really get too much into that tension between, because we know there are people excluded.
And so there are obviously those tensions, and there's always tensions in social work, and there's always people, but it also shows the challenges of doing this decolonizing work as well, and how complicated and how many... variables there are floating around and how to try and at the same time have space and create social work that's uh has that recognition and status and proper pay and conditions and so forth um you know so i think uh there
are um and that kind of proliferation of new projects and new approaches and opportunities for placement um And really sort of, I suppose, diversifying and making the social workers more visible, I guess, in a range of contexts may well be a bit of a route towards professional recognition because I'm thinking of kind of the recent recognition of social work in Nigeria.
Part of the path to that and to be visible to the decision makers in government is to have demonstrable outcomes that the profession could point to and say, this needs to be protected, it needs to be nurtured.
And I wonder if that, I wonder if a by-product of the CSR could be the development of a bank of evidence to say, well, here's what social work can achieve.
And I was also quite intrigued there with the idea and recognizing, because it is a challenge, if he's saying you still at the same time want to have a Western influence on what that means within a curriculum, how to identify what you keep and what you exclude, and how would you go about that process? I mean, that sounds inherently super complex, but he did say there are tests or research projects underfoot to try and do that, to eke out something which would be suitable.
Yeah, and actually that idea of sometimes, I don't know if it's a fair way of describing it, but sometimes when we talk about indigenisation of social work curriculum, we talk about the removal of Western centric ideas.
But that can't be done just by saying, well, that's our, we're comfortable with this.
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