Breakthroughs

New Avenues for Disabled Learners

Delhi government is not the only one making the most of computer-aided learning in its schools. Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) is ensuring that students with physical disabilities do not lag behind when it comes to information technology usage.

RCI and National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) have recently signed a MoU to widen the inclusion of students in society through education. Specially designed educational lectures for students with disabilities will be broadcast in almost all centers of RCI catering to the educational needs of these special children.

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has prepared a software to educate the students. As a result of the tie-up with ISRO around 100 study centers of RCI across the country will be connected to its Delhi studio via satellite. All these centres will receive NIOS affiliation.

"Along with the students with disability, their parents and other trainers involved in educating them will also be able to avail of the free informative lectures at these study centres. We are facilitators of the specialized interactive programmes. The customized needs of the different centres have to be looked in to," started R G Gade group director, ISRO.

ISRO has designed a satellite channel for visually challenged students so that the training can be made easily available. Special courses are also designed for the disabled students that will be imparted through Edusat.

A separate disability channel will soon be on air, facilitating computer-aided learning. According to M C Pant, Chairman, NIOS, the institute has taken several innovative steps for these special children like involving the students in developing training modules for the trainers.

"Students of Hellen Keller Institute, Mumbai, who trained Rani Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachachan for the movie 'Black' will be training the trainers who will further be incorporated in educating these students at various centres," asserted Pant.

Concerned over the little that has been done for the education of disabled students; a new system is being planned where seven zonal co-ordination committee of RCI will provide the feedback on the efficacy of computer-aided learning for the disabled.

"Funds are a major problem and there is no effective implementation of strategies chalked out to benefit this special section of the society," said lan Cardoso, chairman, RCI.

Source: Enabling education. The Times of India, Daily. New Delhi, 11 September, 2006.

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HC to the rescue of mentally ill languishing in jail

Eleven undertrials who were sent to mental asylums across Punjab and Haryana after being arrested for various offences and never put on trial for years can now hope for freedom.

In an order passed earlier this week, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the two state governments and the lower judiciary to follow the guidelines set by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in such cases. The court has also asked both states to draw up a list of such detainees.

According to NHRC guidelines, any undertrial who has served a term equivalent to the one he would have got in case of his indictment should be freed. Besides, mentally deranged under trials, who have been certified by doctors as having no chances of recovery to stand trial, should be freed immediately.

Tragically, the court order came after the death of an under trial who was mentally unsound and confined in prison for 27 years. Jai Singh spent most of his life at a mental asylum in Ambala awaiting trial. Singh was spotted by NHRC chairperson Dr AS Anand during an inspection of the Ambala central jail in December 2003.

The jail records showed that Singh, arrested 27 years ago on murder charges, was yet to stand trial and had been "reduced to a mere number'' in official records.

Anand said the "prison scene was all the more distressing as Jai Singh's file had been dumped into the prison's record room" while the court had observed that the person be brought to face trial "as and when he is fit to do so".

Moved by Singh's plight, the NHRC appealed to the high court in 2004 which ordered both state governments to provide a list of all mentally ill undertrial persons who had been under detention for long without standing trial.

Even as his case was being heard, Singh died in the asylum in December 2005. His wife, Maya Devi, had been denied permission by jail authorities to meet him. She had alleged that Singh was kept in solitary confinement in the asylum.

aasha.khosa@expressindia.com

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