Article of the Week

Delhi: Determination to be a part of society

Delhi Government in its budget, 2006 has proposed an allowance of Rs 350 per month for people with disabilities. The allowance for the unemployed people with disabilities of 18 years and above will continue till they get a job or are self-employed.

Apart from this initiative, the employment scenario of people with disabilities, primarily in the growing Indian corporate sector can be simply called 'pathetic'. Javed Abidi, executive director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled people (NCPEDP) said that in a survey they conducted on 100 major companies of both public and private sector, 0.40% was the percentage of employment of people with disabilities.

Around 30 companies did not even respond. Despite the 3% reservation for people with disabilities, the job opportunities for the physically challenged are dismal. Some attribute it to the lack of education among the disabled and some to their inability to perform.

But according to Malay Nandi, PRO, All India Federation for the Deaf, only the third grade or the fourth grade jobs are offered to candidates with disabilities as people have a perception that just because they are disabled they will not be able to do a job. He also says that it is unfortunate that whenever disabled employees are seen, they are in positions such as peons or helpers, which conveys incorrect signals.

It has been observed that disabled students should be imparted job-related and practical training rather than vocational education. It has been suggested that instead of giving them vocational training like candle-making, book-binding, sewing or basket-making, NGOs should train physically challenged students in management skills, journalism, banking or information technology.

There are several sectors where disabled people can do well. After being involved with mentally challenged children for years, Jayanti Dalmia, chairperson of Four Steps School, opined that with proper guidance and motivation such students could work as graphic designers, teachers and receptionists, among other areas.

Nandi said that people with hearing impairment can perform jobs like tool-assembling, tool-making, book-binding, sewing and data processing. Compared to the public sector, the private sector seems to be more open to giving disabled people equal opportunities for employment.

Companies like Hero Honda, Maruti, American Express, Apeejay Surendra Group, Bharat Petroleum Corporation limited. Infosys, Signet Corporation, Titan industries, GAIL, NTPC and Sakthi Trading Company, to mention a few, have taken a step forward by hiring disabled people and bringing them to the mainstream.

Vaishali Batra, human resource manager, Hero Honda, Gurgaon, said that as a conscious decision they have about 20 to 25 employees with hearing impairment. They work on the same floor with other employees and on the same salary. It is difficult to tell them apart from the other workers.

Priti Prakash Prajapati

Retinitis Pigmentosa left me visually impaired right from birth. I did my schooling from Sarvodaya Vidyalaya Ashok Vihar. Despite my teachers' objection, my parents were against sending me to a school for the blind. They motivated me to exceed in academics and befriend other children. My mother left her job and used to spend hours reading lessons to me. My parents used to darken the lines in the notebooks and make me feel the objects to identify them. They were my pillars of support, encouraging and helping me to imbibe a competitive spirit and constantly boosting my morale.

I developed a keen interest in classical music at an early age my guru Pandit Jagdish Bhattacharya helped me to realise my potential. I stood first in the class XII boards among the blind students. Several people advised my parents that I should pursue a career in music as it was considered a viable career option for visually impaired students and some even though that I was not competent enough to pursue higher studies. But my determination proved them wrong. I always wanted to be a teacher and mould the career of students. I went on to do my graduation in Hindi from Daulat Ram College and eventually got a PhD from Delhi University. At present, I am a senior lecturer of Hindi at Lady Shri Ram College. At times, I have faced problems in traveling alone and have to depend on others and have experienced useless sympathy. But I have always believed in fighting my fears and finding solutions.

My motto in life is never to lose courage and accept what you are and how you are. If you are willing to fight for your cause, luck will automatically favour you.

Source: Opportunities for all. The Times of India, New Delhi, 13th March 2006.

Government policy - Education for All.. but by when?

In March 2005 the HRD minister, Arjun Singh made a historic statement in parliament regarding 'Children and youth with disabilities' where he said that there would be no rejections of children with special needs in mainstream education.

He said that it should and would be their objective to make mainstream education not just available but accessible, affordable and appropriate for students with disabilities. After the statement was made several national level consultations were conducted all over the country to get the views of concerned people and an Action Plan was drawn up.

This was then given to the Ministry of HRD. Unfortunately the ministry seemed to have not been able to put their act together and put this on the backburner forgetting the commitment made by their minister in the parliament and did not work out the financial allocation needed.

No policy can be put into action without fiscal support and it is likely that the minister's statement in parliament will remain a policy without teeth… Just a statement of pious intent, yet another policy which is rhetoric not going to be put in operation, with perhaps no intention of putting it in operation.

Inclusive education is now a vital part of the discussion on developments in education at both the national and international level. The earlier system of segregated education or special schools for children with disabilities was a reflection of care and not rights or entitlements.

It is now believed that this should be replaced by inclusive education with an emphasis on rights, equal opportunity and participation. International declarations and meetings at Salamanca, Dakar and nearer home in Kochi have reiterated the importance of seeing that all children are educated together.

Inclusive education addresses a diversity of pupils and involves differentiating each of their needs. The concept is not restricted only to children with disabilities but encompasses all, who for some reason or other face barriers to learning thus getting excluded from mainstream education.

It is a never-ending process rather than a simple change of state and is dependent on continuous pedagogical and organizational development within the mainstream. It improves the quality of education for all children. In India, while studying the history of education of disabled children, we find that this is one group that still suffers massive exclusion.

In a policy research study (Invisible children a policy of exclusion) undertaken about disability policy in India it was found that India has the world's largest preschool programme run by the HRD ministry's Department of Women and Child called the ICDS which excludes children with special needs.

The discrimination and oppression continues against disabled children despite them being 'dalits' in the poorest areas of the country in the rural, tribal and urban slums on the grounds of disability and despite the ICDS being an anti-poverty programme.

Through hard evidence based research the practicability of inclusive education has been demonstrated by setting up inclusive 'aanganwadis' in the slums of Mumbai leading to the inclusion of over 3000 children and families into mainstream education.

There is a legislation in the country - The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 and there are many policies in place in keeping with international declarations (as in the Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan) but the changes that are needed to put policy into practice have still not taken place.

The other reason for this lethargy is that it is sadly a very poor powerless group of people who are politically weak and huge in numbers where the disability constituency runs into 50 to 100 million people.

Therefore the disability group despite being a very large constituency around the country remains accurately marginalized. None of the political manifestos of the political parties have ever addressed this problem involving 50 million people and families mainly in the poorer areas of country's rural, trial and urban slum sections.

Today's politicians being only interested in political power are not interested in serving these nameless, faceless and powerless poor. The major barriers are systemic in nature due to which implementation strategies have not been worked out.

Children with special needs have therefore suffered years of institutionalized discrimination with an apathetic indifferent political system.. A system which claims that it works for the poor of the country.

"Education for All" will very well remain an empty promise on the part of the government of India, if there are no plans for operationalisation of policy into practice for the inclusion of children with disabilities. Today, due to the State's non-involvement a staggering number of 98% of India's disabled people do not receive any care from the government (GOI 1994).

Source: Education for the disabled. Central Chronicle, Bhopal, 6th March 2006.