Village Square speaks to Sudesan V of Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) to understand how Kollam achieved the incredible feat of becoming India’s first constitution-literate district educating over 14 lakh individuals and 6 lakh families.
Sudesan V: Let me start with thanking Village Square for giving me this opportunity to interact with you. KILA is an institution for training the local body institutions in Kerala.
So for the last 25 years, KILA has been working on this mission. Three years back, KILA initiated a programme called Constitutional Morality for government officials and elected representatives. That was the beginning of our constitutional literacy programme, actually.
It was intended to educate both the electoral representatives and the government officials of local bodies. But the sudden COVID-19 outbreak disturbed our training programme. We decided to continue that programme by using the online platform while also inviting participation from the general public.
After the first COVID wave, we started to imagine the constitution literacy campaign with a larger perspective. Initially we designed this programme for a single district of Kerala – Kollam.
We decided to call it ‘The Citizen 2022’ and kickstarted it with six broad objectives.
Sudesan V: First is to educate all the people above the age of ten.
The second objective is to install the preamble to the Indian constitution in all the houses, public institutions, government offices and public places.
The third objective is to ensure that a copy of the constitution is in every household, in every family. We have around seven lakh families in Kollam.
The fourth objective is to present the constitution in a very lucid, easy to understand form.
The fifth objective is to focus on the social and reformative aspect of the constitution.
The sixth objective (and the most important one for me) is how to practice the constitutional values in our personal, family, social, political and cultural lives.
Village Square: Why is the initiative called ‘The Citizen’?
Sudesan V: The answer is linked to our last objective.
When people practice the constitutional values in all aspects of their life they will become special. In our view that is how they will become ‘the citizen’.
Village Square: Teaching constitution to an entire district seems extremely difficult. How did you implement the initiative?
Sudesan V: We created multiple levels of organisational mechanisms.
The primary level is called the Equality Forum. The Equality Forum consists of 10 to 20 families. Actually, the classes take place at this level.
Above the Equality Forum, at the ward level, there is another forum called the Democracy Forum. This gives all the logistic support to the Equality Forum and mobilises people.
At the gram panchayat level there is a Liberty Forum. Liberty Forum oversees all the functions of both the Equality Forum and the Democracy Forum.
At the fourth level (Block level) there is the Fraternity Forum which monitors all actions at the panchayat level. Finally at the district level there is the Secular Forum which takes care of all the activities in the district.
Village Square: India’s constitution is vast. What are the topics that you cover during training?
Sudesan V: We have focused on five topics of the Constitution – historical background and the preamble to the constitution, what is the constitution and why we need it, basic structure of the constitution, fundamental rights and duties and the judicial courts. KILA has designed a module in Malayalam centred on these five topics.
The instructors, who are called senators, are given a three-day residential training who then go and educate the people.
Village Square: Tell us more about the instructors. Who are they and what was their role in The Citizen 2022?
Sudesan V: Instructors are extremely passionate. After receiving the training they became empowered and excited.
We have two eligibility conditions for someone to become an instructor. They should have passed their class 12 and aged between 18 and 40. Based on these, the gram panchayat selected these young instructors. Of the 20,000-plus instructors, more than 70% were women.
They did not leave out any place. They covered all government offices, schools, even the bus stands and moving buses to train and educate people about the constitution. This was the most heart-warming.
Village Square: What changes has constitution literacy brought in Kollam according to you?
Sudesan V: We have started a new practice, a new culture actually. Every public programme in Kollam now begins with the reading of the preamble. We have created a musical version of the preamble in our language, Malayalam.
This is evolving. Now the practice has been started in government offices and schools. I hope even in private schools and self-financing colleges this culture will start.
The real beneficiaries of this programme are people from the marginalised, weaker sections. Without any pressure from the local bodies or the elected representatives, they voluntarily came and participated in the training sessions and classes.
Initially, it was difficult to mobilise them but slowly they started to understand its value. As we conducted more sessions they got more and more excited. The number of participants always grew in the subsequent sessions. The people owning this initiative is why this has been successful.
The lead image shows the preamble to the constitution on the Indian flag, indicating its significance
