Leadership, systems, and strategy—we speak about these in our management classrooms. But the quiet practice of citizenship—rooted in care, accountability, and everyday decisions—rarely makes it to lecture slides. Acts of citizenship sustain a democracy. They are not always taught. Often, they are lived.
In my work with students at S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR) and with grassroots organisations across India, I’ve seen adolescents and adults step into roles of civic responsibility without fanfare or instruction. These are not heroic acts. They are everyday actions born of reflection, relationship, and commitment. And they offer us an alternate vision of citizenship: lived in unstructured environments, informed by context, and nurtured by ecosystems that make participation possible.
This piece reflects on those moments—where citizenship comes alive not in policy speeches or civics textbooks, but in rural by-lanes, community gatherings, and even housing society WhatsApp groups.
Stories That Stay With You
One of the most striking examples comes from Synergy Sansthan, a youth-led organisation in Madhya Pradesh. Through their Jagrik programme, adolescents pick issues relevant to their lives—menstrual health, untouchability, school access—and act on them.
A student from SPJIMR told me about a 17-year-old in Harda district who, after learning about gender equity, stood up in her Gram Sabha and asked: Where are the toilets for girls? She wasn’t instructed to speak. She simply claimed her right to do so. That is what ACTiZENship looks like—alert, informed, and rooted in place.
At Head Held High Foundation in Karnataka, young people—many from disadvantaged backgrounds—undergo a six-month transformation journey. Most of them have not completed formal schooling. Yet they emerge civically conscious, ready to mediate disputes, support local development, and solve problems in their villages. One young man began organising waste collection after noticing that elders fell sick more often during the monsoon.
Closer home, in my own Mumbai housing society, a group of schoolchildren took it upon themselves to manage dry and wet waste segregation. They made posters, spoke to neighbours, mobilised parents, and ran a reminder campaign on WhatsApp and the lift noticeboard. What began as a class project became a civic routine—small, sustained, and contagious.
Ecosystems Enable ACTiZENship
What connects a teenager in a Gram Sabha, a youth in a rural hamlet, and children in a housing society? None of them were instructed to act. But all of them were enabled by an ecosystem—whether a youth collective, a learning programme, a community elder, or simply the space to be taken seriously.
In management education, we often ask: How do we prepare students for complexity? One answer lies in building ecosystems where reflection, responsibility, and action are integral.
At SPJIMR, the Development of Corporate Citizenship (DoCC) initiative rests on this belief. Through rural internships and community-based projects, students enter unfamiliar settings—not as experts, but as learners and collaborators. They return with questions they didn’t know they needed to ask.
Sometimes they also return with quiet but powerful shifts in perspective.
- In Tamil Nadu, one student supported farmers by translating dense government documents into simple Tamil so they could access schemes.
- In Odisha, another student co-created a participatory menstrual health toolkit with local ASHA workers, allowing adolescent girls to track their cycles and share knowledge among peers.
- In Gujarat, a student worked with a waste picker cooperative to document women’s life histories—later used by the group to raise funds and strengthen its institutional partnerships.
These weren’t part of their official briefs. They emerged because ecosystems gave students trust, time, and freedom. And that is how they began to act not just as interns, but as ethical participants in civic life—as ACTiZENS (as the Desh Apnayen Sahayog Foundation team calls such citizens).
How ACTiZENS Are Made
Becoming an ACTiZEN doesn’t require a grand platform or formal title. It often begins with proximity to a problem, the permission to engage, and the support to act—even when you don’t have all the answers.
Adolescents and adults become ACTiZENS when:
- They are taken seriously: Their questions and initiatives are engaged with, not dismissed.
- They are invited into real spaces: Gram Sabhas, municipal meetings, local drives, and school committees.
- They are allowed to try, fail, and try again: Citizenship is iterative, not perfect.
- They are supported by ecosystems: Mentors, NGOs, educators, and peer groups that sustain engagement.
The intention is not to “teach” ACTiZENship, but to build contexts where it can be encountered—through lived experience, ethical dilemmas, and problem-solving in real communities.
Transformative Encounters
Some of the most powerful stories are those where students themselves are transformed.
- From Spectator to Participant (Markal, Maharashtra):
Tanisha Sukhija entered her DoCC internship at SOS Children’s Villages, Pune with a research mindset. But watching women like Trishali—once confined to homes—lead self-help groups and manage lakh-rupee funds reshaped her view of empowerment. Dignity, she realised, is built through daily acts of solidarity and persistence. - Reframing Education (Dehradun):
Rohit Roy began by analysing ERP software at Aasraa Trust. But witnessing barefoot children studying beside rubble forced him to listen differently. He came to see education not just through the lens of data, but as care work—where credibility and trust mattered as much as curriculum. - Confronting Injustice (Srinagar):
Abhijay Kandi’s project on dry latrines at Safai Karmachari Andolan turned into a moral reckoning. Listening to the stories of manual scavengers like Aarshad Sheikh, he moved from neutral researcher to engaged witness. His work became less about data, and more about confronting complicity in a system built on silence.
These stories matter not because they scale, but because they remind us that democracy is not built in slogans. It is built in small, repeatable practices of care, engagement, and responsibility.
Democracy in the Everyday
If democracy is to thrive, we must think of it not only as a system of representation but as a daily practice—cultivated in classrooms, internships, WhatsApp groups, panchayat halls, and apartment corridors.
Citizenship is not only about being informed; it is about being involved. And involvement begins in the everyday—with the courage to question, the patience to listen, and the commitment to act. Democracy, in the end, is sustained not by a few in positions of power, but by many in their everyday lives.
Dr. Chandrika Parmar is Associate Professor, Economics and Policy Director, Development of Corporate Citizenship (DoCC) at SPJIMR, Mumbai. She has 30 years of work experience, having held leadership positions across leading academic and research institutions.