Disability activist and wheelchair-user, Prof Anita Ghai, 57, was travelling by Air India from Dehradun to Delhi on January 29. She had reminded the airline at Dehradun that she would require a wheelchair at the Delhi airport.
However, the wheelchair was not made available. She had to squat to get down the steps. Her request to bring the passenger coach nearer was denied for security reasons. She was left with no option but to crawl to the coach.
There was an uproar in the disability sector against the insensitivity shown towards her. (Incidentally, the captain of the flight was trying to contact the control room to get her help, but was not able to get through to it. Is this not, in itself, a security lapse?)
The very next day came news reports appeared about Antara Telang, 24, who was flying out of the Mumbai Airport. The security personnel at the airport made her take off her prosthetic (artificial) leg for a security check. She had to remove off her jeans in a storeroom, hop on one leg to hand the prosthetic leg to the security personnel to run it through the scanner.
Needless to say, security is paramount and procedures have to be followed by everyone. However, this kind of security check can be done with an ETD machine (Explosives Trace Detector), a hand-held device which is run over the artificial limb while it is still worn.
In Jind, a speech and hearing-impaired man was beaten by the security guards of the Deputy Commissioner a few days back because he wanted to meet him. In Dehradun, police beat eight visually impaired students on a train. Such incidents of insensitivity are rampant.
The 2011 Census says that 2.21 per cent of the Indian population has a disability of some kind. However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), roughly 10 per cent of the population of any developing country has a disability. The Indian disability sector says that 6-7 per cent of Indians have a disability. Taking 6 per cent to be a conservative estimate, we have approximately 7.26 crore Indians living with disabilities.
We need to take into account the elderly as well, who make up about 7 per cent of the total population and whose physical and intellectual issues become similar to those of persons with disability (PwDs) as they age. Also, the rising number of natural and manmade calamities keeps adding to the number.
Calling a person with disability ‘Divyang’, as proposed by our Prime Minister, instead of “Viklang’ does not change their reality. They do not get either divine powers or divine treatment anywhere. Changing of nomenclatures will not help. Changing of attitudes will.
Can we afford to marginalise and ill-treat such a sizeable section of our country? The status of PwDs is that of a marginalised sector, struggling to lead a dignified and independent life. Yet, such incidents shatter the self-respect of the sector. A person with disability from any social, economic and educational strata can face humiliation at the most unexpected of places at any time.
Our society needs to be made aware of disability as a collective social issue and not as an individual’s problem to be dealt with by her/him and the family. The sensitisation has to be done at every level, beginning from homes to schools, colleges, workplaces and public places.
The staff and officials of state and private agencies should be put through sensitisation programmes on how to deal with PwDs in the line of work.
Honestly, a basic sensitivity and a common-sense understanding of the issue are expected from society, which is sometimes found lacking. It cannot treat a person callously just because they have a disability. Society, at large, has to include people with disabilities in the scheme of things and in their minds.
archnaj_04@yahoo.co.in