Guidance as an organised professional activity is more than four decades old in our country. While in America the guidance movement started as an attempt to fulfil the practical needs of employers and teachers, in India it began as an academic discipline.
Calcutta University enjoys the privilege of being the first Indian university to introduce guidance as a section of its Department of Applied Psychology in 1938.
The main aim of the section was to conduct research in the field of educational and vocational guidance. Later, the Department also started the work on occupational information.
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Certain occupations were analysed and major occupations were classified into four categories according to the level of intelligence and the type of abilities required filling these jobs.
Bombay did not lag behind in initiating programme of guidance. In 1941, Baltiboi a retired accountant working in Calcutta, realised the implications of guidance.
With the help of a psychologist—Mr. Mukerjee from Calcutta University, Baltiboi set up the Baltiboi Vocational Guidance Bureau in Bombay with the sole purpose of providing guidance services to the community.
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Guidance movement received another push forward when Trustees of the Parsi Panchayat Funds and Propertes in Bombay decided to establish a guidance services bureaur Parsi Panchayat Vocational Guidance bureau-for the Parsi community in Bombay.
This bureau worked on meagre resources and scanty staff but with the help of devoted workers it was able to do a great deal of useful pioneering work in guidance.
It was this bureau which organised a career conference for the first time to disseminate occupational information. It was also the first institution to organise a course for career masters.
The bureau also started publishing the Journal of Educational and Vocational Guidance which provided the guidance workers with a professional organ of communication and interchange of ideas and information regarding research and practice in the field.
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Another step forward was taken by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, when it gave official recognition to the movement by setting up a Bureau of Psychology at Allahabad in 1947.