Project to educate youths about country’s constitution

Dimapur, Dec. 11: A unique public initiative by a group called the ‘Community – The Youth Collective, Samvidhan Live! The Jagrik project’ is a movement that aims to help young citizens live and experience the fundamental rights and duties enshrined in the Indian constitution through interactive games and educate adolescents.

Speaking at the launch of the project at the Tourist Lodge in Dimapur on Dec. 11, Community Avenue Network Youth’s (CAN) chief functionary Jenpu Rongmei said that the project would help in developing the personality and ‘understanding of adolescent minds.’

“This is the third edition of The Jagrik Project, the first initiation being on Nov. 26, 2016 celebrating constitution day,” Rongmei informed.

it was informed that in 2016, around 500 “jagriks” (Hindi roughly for ‘conscious citizens’) undertook the task of bringing the constitution to their city, town, village and streets through fun-filled activities and social action tasks such as spending a night at a homeless shelter, or ‘reversing gender roles’ and many others.

Resource person for the programme, Limasenla Longkumer from the Nagaland State Legal Service Authority gave insights into the various basic Fundamental Rights everyone is entitled to.

“Fundamental rights always come with duties and we as Nagas, are still very ignorant of our rights,” Longkumer said, comparing the constitution to a “living book” just as the Bible, Quran or the book of Gita are.

Longkumer stressed on the importance of one basic right, the right to information as embodied in the statute Right to Information Act (RTI).

“An RTI is the highest weapon for the citizens and one must make use of it,” she said.

The director of Don Bosco Institute at Jorhat in Assam, also CAN Youth’s founding member, Father Jerry spoke briefly at the function. He encouraged the young people to learn the foundations of the principles and values that make the country which are “enshrined in the constitution.”

“Our responsibility is to claim our role as citizens and be prepared in building the nation,” he said in encouragement.

This year, Community – The Youth Collective in collaboration with 22 youth-led, youth-engaging organisations from 14 states will be taking part in the project.

So far around 350 “jagriks” have completed over 1000 social and self reality tasks.