how true!
a constructive criticism..
http://www.sentinelassam.com/sentinel_en/story3.htm
------------------------------Disabilities Mindlessly Created
WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
D. N. Bezboruah
In India, we are very fond of rituals. We gloat over them, thrive on them and even turn them into annual ceremonies. A case in point is what we have done with the entire business of disabilities and disadvantages, some of which we talk of as challenges nowadays. While the main thrust of today�s column is the kind of handicaps we impart to absolutely normal children as parents and guardians, it is important to dwell briefly on the very philosophy relating to disadvantages and disabilities that has taken root in the Indian psyche over years of rituals designed to delude ourselves.
When India became free in 1947, and it was time to give ourselves a constitution, we decided very rightly that there were millions of poor, illiterate and disadvantaged people who deserved a leg-up in a free country that was also striving to be a welfare state. So the "founding fathers" of our Constitution (as they are called) decided on a strategy of providing special benefits and reservations to those who were disadvantaged economically, educationally and socially, for a period of ten years. The idea was laudable and the motivation most pious. The general objective was to do everything possible to improve the quality of life of the disadvantaged and to bring them up to the level of those without any disadvantages. It was thought (perhaps rather ambitiously) that a period of ten years would be adequate for the task. Perhaps a more realistic time frame would have been 20 or 30 years. But that was perhaps not the main flaw in the plan envisaged for the disadvantaged people in our Constitution. I have always believed that where we went wrong was in trying to identify disadvantage in terms of caste and tribe rather than in terms of social, economic and educational backwardness. In fact, had disadvantage been identified in terms of backwardness, almost all the Scheduled Castes and Tribes listed in our Constitution would have got included in the list anyway. But the mode of identifying disadvantage in terms of caste and tribe gave rise to some aberrations. First of all, it led people belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Tribes to believe that they would be treated as backward people for all times, and thus remain entitled to the reservations and other benefits for ever, regardless of whether they have overcome their �backwardness� or not. So we now have people who have got over all their backwardness and are more �forward� than anyone else, but who continue to exercise their right to �backwardness� unto perpetuity. Secondly, the identification of disadvantage in terms of caste and tribe has given politicians a handle to extend the benefits to "other backward classes" and even "more other backward classes" in exchange for electoral benefits. By the same token, politicians have been tempted to bring in another aberration that extends the plum of �backwardness� in time as well. They have extended the reservations guaranteed by the Constitution to the disadvantaged 45 years beyond what the Constitution had intended. And things have come to such a pass that our lawmakers will not tolerate anyone even trying to set a date by which the reservations and benefits intended for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes would be ended. After all, the electoral benefits of extending the principle of backwardness in both time and numbers have been stupendous. And the results are there for all to see: reservations extended even to 84 per cent in some States; the total negation of the principle of merit, to the extent that people with merit are expected to leave the country and work elsewhere in the world; the vain hope that by some miracle India can go forward even with all this premium on backwardness! Not surprisingly, even 58 years after Independence, India ranked just 127th among 177 countries listed in the Human Development Report 2004 of the United Nations. Actually, India went up about 13 places above the Report 2003 to land up at the bottom end of countries with medium human development. But look at countries like Sri Lanka (once part of India) ranked 96 and a country like China (huge in size and with the largest population in the world) ranked 94. We shall not talk about Norway (1), Sweden (2), Singapore (25), Malaysia (59), Mauritius (64) and Thailand (76). No matter what we may say about wanting to be regarded as a developed country, we have cooked our goose very well indeed by choosing to put this premium on backwardness. We have created a massive collective disability for ourselves by virtually outlawing merit.
The kind of aberrations that we have brought into the handling of our disadvantaged population is much in evidence in the handling of our disabled people as well. We have legislation for the disabled, but we have turned the laws relating to the handicapped into neat little hoaxes so that the prime beneficiaries are those who claim to be disabled rather than those who are really disabled. The three-per-cent job reservation for the disabled is really going first to those who have minor physical blemishes before the truly disabled are considered. We have reduced even the World Disabled Day into a ritual where it is the disabilities of the disabled that are on display rather than their spectacular achievements. And yet in a harsh, cruel world, the disabled manage to fend for themselves and sometimes even do quite well without any help or empathy from society. But this is not the worst of it - not by a long chalk. It is what our society is doing to create disabled people from normal ones that should be of foremost concern to the people of Assam.
It all begins with the pampering of adolescents (especially boys) by their parents and guardians from a very young age. Ironically enough, it also has to do with a great deal of neglect of today�s children that paradoxically goes hand in hand with the pampering and mollycoddling. Today Assamese parents have managed to send out an unfortunate signal to their spoilt sons. It is that they are beholden to their sons for having been born sons. It is as though the sons do not have to do anything in life beyond being the male offspring of their parents. Thereafter, two paradoxical elements shape the destinies of their offspring. One is overindulgence and overprotection. The other is total negligence by the parents. On the one hand, parents (especially mothers) tend to overfeed their sons, protect them from any discipline and hard regimen that their teachers impose, and generally encourage them to break rules and laws. The "poor things" are always tired, and so according to the mothers, their homework can wait till tomorrow. And hard work and competition can wait till next year or the year after. They are permitted to watch television until they, their parents and siblings are all couch potatoes. By the time they are in their early teens, their general health, their eyes, their capacity for hard work and their will to strive and compete are all ruined, thanks to their doting parents. At the same time, their parents, themselves hooked to television, weddings and parties, have no time for their children. They don�t know what they are learning at school, how much junk food and fizzy aerated beverages they consume every day and who their friends are. They have handed over the contract for the upbringing of their children to their teachers. But how long do their teachers get them in a working day? Hardly for six hours. For the remaining three-quarters of the day children are with their parents. It is in these 18 hours that they are supposed to learn good manners (including table manners) and wholesome values from their parents. And parents cannot hope to inculcate any worthwhile values in them with mere dining-table sermons. They can do so only by setting examples. And parents who run their households more on bribes than on their salaries have absolutely no right to talk to their children about values at all. So whatever little is learnt at school is helped to be unlearnt at home. They somehow think that the money spent on their children makes up for all their neglect.
Is it at all surprising then that our children should be unable or unwilling to compete in life? How many of them get into the professional courses that call for tough competition? How many of them even want to? We have an IIT in Guwahati now, but how many Assamese boys and girls find a place there on their own merit? And yet there was a time when students from Assam made it to IIT, Kharagpur and elsewhere in dozens.
Here is a case of children with no disability or handicap at all who are being given handicaps or disabilities by their own parents for want of caring and guidance. Here is a case of a whole generation of normal children being imparted social disabilities by their own parents. Here indeed is a case of parents putting crutches under the armpits of perfectly healthy children. And by doing this, they are getting normal children to acquire a limp.
_______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [email protected] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
Mailing list FAQ: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
