Social Work and Social Welfare

Shankar Pathak, pp. 374+XII, Rs. 695, Niruta Publications 

​At this stage of my life (82 years), I had thought, I would not take any trouble, make any effort regarding my published work – collection of papers, books and subsequently published articles in academic journals. But certain events that took place about fifteen months back, prompted (tempted?) me to reconsider my earlier decision. The result is a selection of my published writings, mainly from two books and addition of four chapters specially written for this selection, and arranging them in one volume, grouped under a common theme. The entire part one of my book, Social Welfare-An Evolutionary And Developmental Perspective, Macmillan-India (1981) is included here as part one. In the second part, I have included selected writings from my other book – Social Welfare, Health and Family Planning in India, Marwah Publications, Delhi, 1979. I have also added four chapters especially written for this book recently (March, April 2012) namely, Helping Process in the Bhagavadgita, Bhakti: Concept, Ideology And Spread, Professionalisation of Social Work 1975-2012 and Developmental Social Welfare. The notes and reference have been retained, with appropriate deletions and renumbering, following the chapter numbers in this book.

All my books are out of print. There may be a demand for these books because the number of institutions providing social work education at the under-graduate and post-graduate levels has increased, and may be close to 200.

Having made the selection about a year ago, I had given up the idea of publishing it, mainly due to some practical difficulties.      M.H Ramesha of Niruta Publications succeeded in persuading me in publishing this book, by offering the necessary help for revising and updating the previously published writings and in writing the new chapters.
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Though I retired in 1990, I was professionally active until 2000, and so I was in touch with the developments in the field of social work. I have tried to revise and update the previously published writings, by taking note of the relevant literature which I was aware of and which was available to me. In particular, I should mention the major academic project-Review of Fifty Years of Social Work Literature, special issue of the Indian Journal of Social Work, April, 1997. Given my personal circumstances such as my location, age and related problems, computer illiteracy etc, I have done my best to improve the quality of the manuscript while revising and updating it. I am aware that there may be some deficiencies and I hope the readers will be indulgent and ignore them.
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Nirmala .L, for her help in computer printings of drafts, struggling patiently with my handwriting, T.F. Hadimani for preparing a very attractive design for the cover of the book and    M.H. Ramesha for daring to publish it. Ponnaswamy .N,     Venkatesh .K, K. Anantha Murthy and Nayana M.K have also done computer printing of some parts of the manuscript and I thank them. Pamela Singla of the Department of Social Work, Delhi University, has taken much trouble in securing for me the copies of the printed versions of the talk, by B.N. Ganguli and Elmina Lucke which appear as Appendix I&II and I greatly appreciate her help. Ms. Zakia S. Pathak had gone through some of the chapters in the second part of this book and made editorial improvement of the manuscripts when they were first published; she also provided me with two books for my reading which I appreciate. K.S. Ramesha has done the final typesetting of the computer-script of this book very competently and I thank him.   M.A. Boratti translated a few lines of the vachana by Chennabasavanna and I am greateful to him. 
 
Shankar Pathak

Social Work and Social Welfare
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