Social Work Profession in India : An Uncertain Future 180 CHAPTER 9 Should We Re-think The Nature Of Social Work? M. Nadarajah Remembering… In 1979, I joined a course in MA social work at the Madras School of Social Work (MSSW), specializing in community development. I left the course in a year’s time having become disenchanted with the programme: I experienced a conflict inside me between my classroom and fieldwork experiences. My fieldwork in the slums of Madras (now Chennai) showed me dynamics that were increasingly not covered in the classroom. Increasing tension between theory of social work and social work practice led me to consider other ways to serve or work with individuals and communities. This and for a number of other reasons, I left the course. The experience at MSSW was however invaluable. When I applied for MA in social work, I was a graduate in science (having majored in Chemistry and minored in Physics and Mathematics). The short period I was in the MA course brought the ‘social’ strongly to my attention. It was a life-changing impact for I never became a practising chemist but a practising sociologist…one who worked with the social, trying to understand it at times and intervene on it at other times, hopefully, for the better. For all those years that I was not a ‘professional’ social worker, I think my work and contributions to a large extent can be seen as a sort of ‘social work’. Looking back after about 30 years, I think I never really left social work!