Imagine a tunnel with no light at the end of it and no one to get you out. The thought would drive anyone to despair, much less a child. Yet nearly two crore of the population, children who are ‘special’ through no fault of theirs, languish in a vacuum in our country.
This invisibility is what the Unicef has highlighted in its ‘Global Report on the State of the World’s Children 2013.’ The report was released at Suchana Bhavan on Saturday.
Department of social welfare, women & child development Principal Secretary Mridula Sinha, Primary Education director Mamta, Director of SIRD RP Singh, Deepshikha director Alka Nizami and Ashok Bhagat from Vikas Bharati were present on the occasion along with Jharkhand Unicef chief Job Zachariah. The report calls for doing away with the discrimination and stigma — both overt and subtle — attached to differently-abled children. Society considers them a bad omen and often hides them away, not wanting to acknowledge the ‘disability’.
In fact, Zachariah pointed out how the very semantics is a psychological snub — as such children are called disabled or challenged. He was at pains to point out how the real challenge lay before us for their inclusion into the mainstream. The RTE ACT provides for “all-round development of the child and making the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety through a system of child-friendly and child-centred learning”. Zachariah added, “By mentioning a ‘child-friendly’ atmosphere, the State takes it upon itself to provide for all children, with no discriminations.”
Principal Secretary Sinha said, "It is wrong to see the disability before the child. We need to concentrate on the potential and abilities of such children. The Government is committed to making greater efforts to support integration of children with disabilities.”
Zachariah explained, “Unicef is working with the State education department to provide enough resource support staff to city schools for ensuring better facilities for the differently-abled.” These resource staff work as liaison point between the teacher and student, explaining to the former what the special needs of the particular child are and providing support to the child in his/her learning.
There were several children at Saturday’s function, who served to prove the point that those with special needs were not out of place in ordinary schools. All had some sort of impairment — visual, speech or orthopaedic. They were from different classes, from class III to XI, but they were all happily studying along with lakhs of other ordinary children. Unicef considers it important for Jharkhand schools not only to address infrastructural issues — like ramps, wheelchair-friendly toilets or Braille books which most of them have — but also emotive issues of acceptability.
“It is important to have trained teachers for each and every area of disability, so no child feels left out,” said Zachariah. This is yet to be achieved, what with most Government reports pegging disability in our population at 2 per cent roughly. Interestingly, the norm across most developed countries is 5 per cent disabled in the population. The figures may be approximate but it is evident that a crucial part of the differently-abled population in India is not even recorded. It’s just invisible.
“We have a long way to go," Sinha admitted. The need to identify that missing 2 per cent of the population as having special needs is imperative. The percentage may be small, but the figures would run into crores. Saturday’s event sought to give these crores of children the opportunity to prove themselves ‘special,’ in more ways than one.