Voices

Guwahati: Violations and misuse of the rights of the disabled

The attitude of most people in India to the disabled is most unfortunate and quite unbecoming of a welfare society. At the root of this total repudiation of the handicapped is a fatalistic attitude to disability.

Probably many regard disability in an individual as some kind of a divine punishment for a sin committed in a previous life! As a result, all the new legislation in aid of the disabled has been unavailing because these laws are implemented by petty, superstitious souls.

Amendments to the Disability Act of 1955, that require the government to reserve three per cent jobs for the disabled, have been flouted with impunity, with no bureaucrat even batting an eyelid. So that the disadvantaged have even had to go to court on several occasions to get some of these amendments implemented.

That is should be necessary for them to go to court to get their dues should be a matter of shame to thick-skinned bureaucrats. Be that as it may, the handicapped have now secured a few rights through legal activism. The Supreme Court has ruled that Indian Airlines must provide wheelchair lifts at airports, and disabled worshippers of Tamil Nadu can now enter temples in Wheelchairs.

But what about 10-year-old Vasim Khan of Bangalore, a polio victim, who still goes to school on a makeshift wooden plank with wheels that has to be propelled with his hands. When he reached school, he has to crawl up 24 steps to reach his classroom.

He finds writing very difficult because his wrists hurt from miles of pushing the street with his palms to get to school. His teachers are not trained to deal with even such handicaps. Obviously, in the new metropolis called Bangalore, there is not one bureaucrat ashamed enough to help this determined boy to attend school like a human being.

Source: Help for the Disabled. The Sentinel, Daily. Guwahati, 10 September 2006.