“I learnt about the constitution, passed my exams and forgot about it. But I don’t think I will forget the lessons I learnt from the tasks I did during the Jagrik journey. This is how I truly understood the samvidhan,”  says Maya Rani, a young girl from Patna, Bihar. After participating in Samvidhan LIVE! The Jagrik Project, she led a night rally with 70 youth in her neighbourhood to exercise her right to freedom. 
Children first come across the Constitution of India in their classroom. Typically students are made to memorise the Preamble, fundamental rights and duties in their social science class.
Concepts such as equality, fraternity and secularism are introduced to students through the textbook. Yet the curriculum design and prevalent teaching methodology fail to communicate the real meaning of these values. 

The Indian Constitution is the longest constitution in the world. In its current form, it has 448 articles, 12 schedules, 5 appendices and 101 amendments. How can teachers develop their own understanding of it or that of their students? How can they help their students embody its spirit?
Statistics indicate that more than 25% of India’s population is below 25. Will young India ever get a chance to exercise their rights and perform their duties without learning the Constitution in an engaging way? 

The importance of constitutional education for teachers and students

“If a teacher has barely any knowledge of the constitution, how can we expect the students to know about it?,” says Dr. Punam Kumari, a Hindi teacher at Jamshedpur Public School. 
She says, “It is absolutely essential for school children to learn about values, rights and duties mentioned in the constitution in order to become good citizens. The current curriculum is insufficient and constitutional education should be made a separate subject.”

In 2015, the government made 26 November ‘Constitution Day’, which meant that on this day, students in schools would learn about Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the constitution. Although this was a positive start, is celebrating one day enough to bring home the message that the makers of the constitution wanted to convey?
Our schools need to make a commitment to teaching constitutional awareness and action to their students - starting at a young age. The only way to do this is to make constitutional education accessible and engaging.

Samvidhan LIVE! The Jagrik Project - enabling youth to live the Constitution

ComMutiny The Youth Collective (CYC) is an association of youth-led and youth engaging organisations across India. It has been promoting active citizenship among young people since the last decade. 
During their work, CYC saw that youth and adolescents were completely disconnected from the constitution and lacked an understanding of what it meant to be an aware and active citizen. 
In today’s socio-economic context, youth are particularly vulnerable. In the last few years, there has been a rise in intolerance and  growing disrespect for anybody who is labelled different in society.  As violence, crime and hate have increased, young people have become both its targets and perpetrators. We also live in a time where political parties are taking advantage of young people to further their own agenda.

A large percentage of the young people in India have not embraced diversity, one of the most central values of the Indian constitution, reveals the CSDS-KAS Youth Survey 2016 by Lokniti. Titled ‘Attitudes, anxieties and aspirations of India’s youth’, this survey was conducted across 19 Indian states with over 6,000 respondents aged between 15-34 years.
It shows that a significant number of Indian youth lack scientific temperament. 47% of the youth surveyed said that religion should be considered more important than science if they happen to clash. It seems that many young people still do not understand gender equality - 40% of the youth think that women should not work after marriage. 

67% of the youth surveyed did not approve of live-in relationships and 61% of the youth considered a love affair between people from the same sex wrong. 23% said they will be uneasy if their neighbours cooked non-vegetarian food. These statistics quite clearly reveal that young people in India have still not understood the constitutional values of equality, justice, liberty and fraternity enshrined in the constitution.
In such circumstances, how does a young person form her/his worldview? The easiest solution is to follow the Constitution of India. Our Constitution provides us a common story within which we can all act as aware and active citizens. But since most of us don't know much about it except that it was a boring chapter we studied in school, we never look at it for guidance.

This is why CYC started Samvidhan LIVE! The Jagrik Project - a public initiative to connect young people to the constitution so that they can take it to the streets and practice it. It is a game with reality-based self and social action tasks, played in pairs over a course of 5 weeks. The participants are called Jagrik which means active citizen (a play on the words Jagruk Nagrik). 
Jagriks get a game board, dice, a set of cards representing fundamental rights and duties, a gender wild card, instruction and scoring sheets along with different colored stickers for each pair. Jagrik pairs rolls the dice and wherever it lands on the game board, it is their next task. They literally get to play out a right or duty by doing a self or social action task along with their partner. 
Most tasks require collaboration where partners help each other win. Each time they complete a task, they score points which take them further ahead in the game. After crossing the tasks off their list, Jagriks come together every week to share their lessons with each other in group meetings called Jagrik Jamghats.

Samvidhan LIVE! game board

The impact of the Samvidhan LIVE! on youth

Since the launch of this campaign in 2016, a survey on constitutional awareness was conducted with over 22,000 respondents in 16 states. It showed that the average score of citizens on constitutional awareness was as low as 36%. 
To see whether playing the constitution game had a positive impact, CYC conducted a snap poll of Jagriks. The poll showed that youth who played the game had much higher awareness and engagement levels after finishing the game (as compared to the national average score and their own score prior to starting the game). They scored 59% in awareness after undertaking the Jagrik journey.

The campaign partners of the Jagrik Project also introduced it in some the schools in their areas. People for Change, a youth-led organisation that works with underprivileged children on the Right to Education in Jharkhand, conducted this campaign in Kasidih High School, Jamshedpur. The school’s principal Francis Joseph says, “This is an interesting initiative taken for children to live the Constitution and understand it in a better way...in the game, there is more focus on duties so that we can make children more responsible citizens and look towards a better India.”

The Jagrik Project has benefited young people in several ways. The game helps students to:

1. Embrace diversity and fraternity -  The game has tasks where students get to learn about diverse identities. It leads them to respect individuals who are different than them and nurture a sense of unity as citizens of this country. 
“There was a task where students had to visit each other’s houses, observe other people’s customs and even cook for one another. When a Christian student cooked for her classmates, they appreciated the food and they wanted her to share the recipe with them,” says Dr. Punam Kumari, who anchored the campaign with 51 students from class 11th in her school.

The game also introduces students to fraternity, the missing piece in experiencing our rights and duties.  While it is easy to understand and enforce equality, liberty and justice through fundamental rights,  there is no concrete way of enforcing or measuring fraternity.  That is why fundamental duties cannot be legally bound.  Samvidhan LIVE! brings to life this missing piece of fraternity by bringing back the focus on duties and makes every student conscious of them.

Samvidhan LIVE! game kit

2. Grasp the imbalance between rights and duties - The game is designed in such a way that it makes students realise how we need to perform our duties if we want our rights to be respected. It makes them strive for a balance between their rights and duties.

3. Build team spirit in the classroom - Playing Samvidhan LIVE! gives teachers an opportunity to create cross border pairs and and encourage the spirit of collaboration among students instead of competition. Shaba Khan, who teaches English at Agrini Public School in Seoni, Madhya Pradesh observed that after playing the game, students from classes 6-8th began to mix with each other when they had to do a task to make laws for their school. She said, “I noticed that children who never spoke to one another began to develop new friendships and complete tasks together.”

4. Experience unknown social realities - Carrying out a task can give a student clarity on a particular issue which she/he may not have faced otherwise. For example, surviving on 32 rupees for a day can help them understand the struggles of a person who lives below the poverty line. This makes them realise why the right to equality is so important. 
“Our school is near a forest area and our students can see how the tribal community is struggling with poverty. After doing this task, they came up to me and said how unfair it was that a tribal person who does so much manual labour barely makes any money,” says Shirish Chouriya, who anchored Samvidhan LIVE! at Agrini Public School.

5. Understand ‘others’ in a new way - Social tasks open up a student’s minds to new perspectives and gives her/him a chance to speak to other students or members of society. Students develop the capacity to communicate non-violently and disagree respectfully even if their views don’t match with someone else. 
Shirish shared how a task related to gender equality developed a student’s ability to think critically and question. When Shrish asked the student what his father did for a living, the student said, “Why does everybody want to know about my father? Why does nobody ever ask me what my mother does. She does a lot of work.”

6. Get out of their comfort zone and nurture their leadership capacities - The game is full of tasks that make students think in extraordinary ways, discover themselves as individuals and reflect on what kind of citizen they would like to be.

7. Pay full attention and engage deeply - Children find this game entertaining because it has practical tasks which keep them on their feet. “Kids find oral learning about rights and duties boring. When they do a task themselves, they understand concepts such as equality more easily,” says Shaba.

8. Be Jagriks, not just Nagriks -  Teachers can empower their students to live their constitutional values by initiating this game and facilitating discussions. As a teacher, you get a chance to help your student become a Jagrik (an aware and active citizen) instead of just a Nagrik (citizen).

9. Make informed electoral choices - In the long term, the lessons from the Jagrik game will help your students choose their leaders carefully based on their understanding of ethics.

10. Take action in their own communities - Teachers and students can join hands to do small campaigns in their communities about local issues. For example, organising a clean up drive to practice a fundamental duty.

How teachers can use Samvidhan LIVE! in their classrooms

CYC has a school version of the Samvidhan LIVE! game kit. It is available in both Hindi and and English. If you’re interested in using the kit, you can act as a facilitator, customise the modules and use them in your classroom.
“Playing Samvidhan LIVE! is completely possible in the school. Teachers can use the last 10 minutes of their class for the game and ask students to complete the tasks as a part of their homework. In the next class, they can do a group discussion where students get to share their experiences and share the next task,” says Dr. Punam Kumari.

Unlike reading out a chapter in the classroom, teachers can divide the class into pairs or small groups and ask them to carry out self and social action tasks.
The teacher can also use her/his creative skills to craft a module customised to complement the existing curriculum. Teachers can play the game with their students over a period of 4-5 weeks using the time allotted for a free period, SUPW or extra curricular activities. “Teachers can also customise the module based on the needs of their students and their level of understanding,” says Shirish.
If you are a teacher and would like to order a game kit for your class, please send an email to cyc.delhi@gmail.com.