A recent Supreme Court observation has once again drawn attention to society’s lack of understanding of disability. Hearing a petition asking that the Uttar Pradesh government be directed to appoint special educators, the SC bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra asked why the government could not provide special schools for children with disabilities instead, stating that it was “impossible” to imagine how children with certain disabilities could be educated alongside non-disabled children.
This observation is shocking in that it flies in the face of provisions both in the Right to Education Act as well as the recent Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. Inclusive education is mandated by law. The impossibility of imagining such an education only reiterates the need for it. Disabled persons—2.2 per cent of India’s population as per the 2011 census—are trapped in a cycle of poverty and illiteracy, not of their own making. It is the external environment that disables individuals by failing to accommodate their needs and forcing them to be dependent on others.
Inclusive education, then, requires that schools make accommodations to ensure disabled children are able to access an equal education. Being educated in a mainstream school improves outcomes for both disabled and non-disabled children. Separate special schools only further the isolation experienced by disabled children and their caregivers and put them in the position of entering a society that hasn’t been sensitised to their existence, let alone their needs. Creating separate facilities for those who are different penalises difference and diminishes society as a whole.
The shortcomes of such an approach can be seen in the difficulty even educated policymakers have in envisioning inclusion. How do we design environments that suit all? Thinking from this perspective helps people find solutions and notice how what we consider the norm is flawed and exclusionary. It is hoped that when the court hears the case again in the coming days, it will reconsider its position.