Disability News and Advocacy in India

When the killer Tsunami left the coasts and islands, after wreaking havoc, a subtext emerged from the human bodies that punctuated the landscape. Though death is a great leveler, the chances are if you are old or slow because of some disability it will take you first. But we cannot be fatalist to the extent of accepting this as a given.

Flip back to about a century when plagues and natural calamities took lives of millions. The calamities continue and so do outbreaks, but the story today is very different. The privileged will always escape with least amount of damage, and those on the margins will remain most vulnerable. People with disabilities were among the worst affected by the calamity and the number people with disabilities swelled further with numerous amputations and cases of mental trauma. These are all afterthoughts, nothing so tragic had happened to so many people at the same time in this country and despite most progressive future gazing a policy could not have been placed. But what about the future? Are we any wiser about what an emergency plan that takes into account people with disabilities?

Unfortunately, as is happening with most policies that are being churned out, the Government seems to be bent upon making people with disabilities re-live the tale of neglect, of being abandoned and then left out of rehabilitation polices.

I am referring to the Disaster Management Bill 2005, that became a necessity for the post-tsunami India, though it was long over due in a country that has floods, quakes and cyclones every year thanks to its sheer size. Incidentally, the Bill makes not even one mention of disabled or disability.

The Bill is being touted as a blueprint to provide for the effective management of disasters in country, but in its neglect of the vital lesson from the Tsunami about vulnerability of persons with disability the Bill nothing short of initiating a recipe of a policy disaster.

# posted by Parvinder Singh : 10:51 AM