What the Government is Doing
Therapy Centers and Insurance Schemes
There are many organizations and resource centers across India that help differently abled children. Aside from this, Anbumani said that the government has started therapy centers and an insurance scheme for the differently abled.
“Earlier there was no insurance for this therapy,” Anbumani said, “and if the kid is physically disabled, then they won't give for the splints and all those special equipments they need. They are not covered under the insurance. So now they have started a special insurance where all this therapy and splints and surgery, all included in this insurance.”
Some of the government insurance schemes are Disha, which is an early intervention and school readiness scheme for children upto the age of 10, and Sambhav, which sets up an additional resource center in each city in India and provides information, assistive devices, appliances, aids and softwares for the disabled and differently abled, according to The National Trust.
There also used to be a scheme called Gyan Prabha, which used to “encourage people with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities for pursuing educational/vocational courses”. However, this scheme was discontinued on January 24, 2018, according to The National Trust website.
Government drops Gyan Prabha scheme for differently abled as many similar ones exist (Newindianexpress)
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Photo is a representational photo taken by Ranjani Venkatakrishnan at Montfort School in Chennai
The RTE Act and Non-Compliance
The government of India also enacted the Right to Education Act in 2009, which, according to Sriram, says that children with disabilities should be taken into mainstream schools and cannot be denied admission. The RTE act says that 25 percent of a school’s population should be children from the marginalized sector, which includes children with disabilities and those from minority groups.
“But in India the law never gets enforced,” Sriram said. “So lot of schools, though RTE says children with disabilities should be taken in the neighborhood schools, because there is no law enforcement of law, they simply say no we can't take in because we don't have the resources.”
Sriram also said that although it is mandatory for schools to have a counselor or a special educator now, most schools aren’t willing to hire one, and differently abled children are denied admission on grounds of lack of resources for them.
“Funds are a problem,” Sriram said. “Second, it is the attitude.”
Sriram said that when schools start taking in differently abled children, they cause a lot of disturbances in class that the other children go talk to their parents about. If an incident happens that affects one of the other children in some way, the parents get angry and complain to the school. Then the admission of neurotypical children in the school drops, Sriram said, citing a school in Tambaram as an example. The school, prioritizing overall admissions over inclusivity, ultimately stops taking in differently abled children.
The problem is with the attitude the adults have, according to Sriram.
“What I have noticed is children don't see differences,” Sriram said. “They are taught to see differences, at least in India, by the parents.”
Sriram described an anecdote where a second grader who had a motor difficulty couldn’t open his own tiffin box (or lunch box) on his own. He also could not open the zip of his pencil pouch, button his shirt, or tie his shoelace on his own. A classmate helped this boy every day.
However, one day, when the classmate was helping the boy, something happened. He went home and told his mother about the incident and how it happened when he was helping his classmate.
“The next day,” Sriram said, “the mother comes to the school and she says, 'How you can tell my son to help him every day? He's not his servant.’”
When Sriram asked the mother if the boy had complained, she said no, he did not complain, but she is complaining on his behalf. She asked Sriram why the school can’t appoint an aaya (one of the cleaning staff of the school) to help the classmate.
So Sriram called the boy and asked him herself if he minds helping his classmate, to which he said, “No, miss, I don't mind. He's my friend.”
“It was very very touching,” Sriram said. “Even now, when I think about it, it is so very touching.”
The attitude of parents like the one in the example illustrated by Sriram is one of the reasons schools don’t take in differently abled children even though it is mandated by the RTE act.
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: Is It Working?
The government of India has also started the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme, under which Sriram said she worked with the inclusion part of Adapt (formerly the Spastic Society of India). Sriram said her job was to visit schools to supervise the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan special educators, coordinate with government school teachers, and make sure that inclusion was happening in the right way at those schools.
Unfortunately, Sriram left Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan when she felt that it wasn't helping the differently abled children the way she expected it to. According to Sriram, the special educators working with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan were more focused on accounting, such as counting how many callipers and hearing aids were given and how much money has been given to schools for buying resources. They also count how many children they have collected from villages for assessments from medical camps that happen at panchayats, or village councils.
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Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
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Ironically, once the schools receive these brand new resources, they don’t allow the differently abled children to actually use them. Sriram said this was because the schools fear that the items will be lost, broken or stolen, so they’re locked away in the resource room, never to be touched by the children they are meant for.
“They're supposed to submit it to the state government saying ‘from this area this many kids were identified, assessed, awareness was given to the parents, calipers were given, all the various aids which you talk about, that has been given,’ that's it,” Sriram said about those working with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
So despite the government of India taking steps toward inclusion on differently abled children in schools, through the RTE act and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, there are still problems with the children getting the education and resources they need.
“Beyond inclusion,” Sriram said, “if you have included, you have to work towards the child, and that doesn't happen.”