EOC: Vision and Future

[Talk given at the AIF-RTE meeting, 7^th Nov. 2009, University of Delhi]

The Equal Opportunity Cell, of the University of Delhi (http://eoc.du.ac.in) was constituted in 2006 with Rama Kant Agnihotri as the co-ordinator to provide equal accessibility and a barrier free environment to persons with physical disabilities and students in reserved categories, such as SC/ST/OBC and other minorities.

Right at the beginning, I’d like to emphasise that ‘barrier-free’ is now a much familiar phrase which, in the common imagination, implies environmental aspects of accessibility (like building more ramps, putting up signages, etc.), but as Anita Ghai in her talk later will re-emphasise, it is more than a physical concept alone. In fact, we have come to stand for the view that the barriers are more a part of the society and the collective mind-set of the society peopled by the majority doing and building things for the majority.

When the EOC was constituted, there were very few members and even fewer enthusiasts and takers. We didn’t have a space of our own, the meetings were held every month or at least every two months, in a tiny corner of the Braille library where a motley crowd of 10 or so people, including some interested students, would gather to discuss the newly emerging issues to do with disability. Even we didn’t have a clear agenda but one hallmark of this early period was the accessibility audit that was conduced for the colleges of the university, and later for many university buildings, by Samarthyam. It is only now that the implementation work of that audit is taking shape slowly. Apart from that, we would deal case by case issues of disability as referred to the committee. Early on, we dealt with the inhuman case of one lecturer of this university in wheel chair who would sometimes have 2-3 hours gap between two classes and would have to simply wait in the corridor in the wheelchair, the teachers room being on the first floor; there wasn’t even an accessible toilet and the person would have to be carried by two people to the toilet.

It took two years of single minded vision of Prof. Agnihotri and few dedicated individuals associated with him to bring into existence the modern space that we have now. This, in spite of active and genuine support from the Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of this university, for whom, the EOC is like their favourite child – so much so, that in all the functions that we have arranged so far, at least one of them, and sometimes both of them, like on the Orientation Day, would be present. We do not have any high-profile function, we do not get dignitaries in our centre, but the VC and/or the PVC’s presence can be counted upon. With this support and the generous support from NTPC, who on their own came up to provide financial and engineering help, the DU-NTPC ICT Centre was inaugurated on 20^th October 2008.

After the centre was set up, along with continuing the earlier work, it has also made available assistive devices through another NGO Saksham to ones who need them, produced about 100 scanned books and collected 4000 e-books. A strong area of the EOC has been to hold sensitising and awareness workshops for different groups within and outside the university. Again, we have a very dedicated staff of people manning the centre, Dr. Nisha Chandra Singh, the Officer on Special Duty has been looking after the workshops very efficiently among other everyday work at the Centre, Prashant Verma who is the manager of the Centre employed by the NTPC has been looking after the ICT course, Hidam Gaurashyam (technical assistant for the Hearing Impaired) and Ramnik Singh (technical assistant for the orthopaedically impaired) are hired as specialists in their areas and they are doing a commendable job. In addition, we have a very dedicated staff of people like Geeta, Vinod and Rajbeer who have been doing much more than just their job profile demands, like everybody else at the Centre. Almost all these people are here today making this meeting happen!

However, the flagship programme of the Centre has been the short-term certificate courses that were started on December 3, 2008; in fact, Sonal Sena, sitting here, was the one who took the first class at the Centre – it was as a part of the Disability and Human Rights course. We started with 4 courses, namely, Sign Language Interpretation (A Level), Disability and Human Rights, Information and Communication Technology, mostly geared toward the Visually Impaired, and Communicative English, mainly geared towards the reserved candidates. Although we didn’t have a lot of time for publicity, we managed to get a good number of students (88) during the first run. Many experts from the disability field were invited to deliver special lectures and take classes as part of the Disability and Human Rights course. For the next batch of courses, we introduced a new course entitled News Reading, Anchoring and Voice Over taught by well-known television personality J.V.Raman; several invited lectures were given by experts from Doordarshan on topics ranging from news reading, anchoring, makeup, lighting, to the portrayal of disability in the media by Anita Ghai a few weeks back. Further, among the next batch of courses to be started in January 2010, we’d like to introduce another new course, Sign Language Interpretation (B Level) for students who have passed the A-level course of this Centre or any other institute. The courses have been a judicial mix of skill development and awareness building. Thus, they are designed to provide skills required to enhance job prospects and also to provide manpower for sectors dedicated to working for the disabled, like Sign Language interpretation and Human Rights.

Apart from the courses, the other academic component of the Centre has been to hold monthly workshops on Sign Language which has been quite popular and reports of the workshops are available at the EOC website. We are also concentrating on issues that have to do with the universal evaluation metric that is applied still in our schools and colleges, where the orthopaedically disabled person is forced to climb up exams and interviews, where the visually impaired person is forced to write exams with or without assistance, where the deaf is interviewed or orally examined. Very few people know that reading or writing skills of the blind or the deaf is very low, and this is not only the case of India in isolation. A survey in the US revealed that 18 year deaf students have the reading skills of a 6^th grader. I have been saying this for a while, that among the deaf there is a high level of illiteracy, that is because the education system as a whole, and definitely the evaluation method, is heavily biased against the disabled. We need to address strongly the issue of equitability of testing and exam systems. I think this meeting of educationist and school-teachers here can take this up in one of their future meetings.

However, we don’t want this to turn into a mere training centre, otherwise it will be just a centre for getting a DU certificate. A mere training centre cannot take the movement ahead – I am calling it a ‘movement’ because that is how we need to view disability at the moment and perhaps for another half-a-century to come. There needs to be an underlying philosophy that binds us together and takes us ahead. I outlined this in a recent talk in the context of the philosophy of justice of Martha Nussbaum. There she proposes the Capabilities Approach, which advices us that instead of making bargains as equals, we’d be better off if we participate with our varying degrees of capacity and disability and establish an interconnection of mutually dependent network with each other. For example, I mentioned earlier the high level of illiteracy among the deaf, it is quite possible to make minimal adjustments and create a network between the deaf and the hearing where there is a give and take relation between the two.

In addition, we also need a political vision, especially in a world that is threatened by, what I call, radical homogeneity. With the dissolution of a mainly bipolar world (at least in the Anglo-American discourse), the initial euphoria of globalisation has given way to this threat of radical homogeneity that has pervaded across many spheres of life. This complete absence of agonism and antagonism and conflict in opinion-making can be countered only if a radical form of democracy can be extended to more and more spheres of our lives. And an institute like the Equal Opportunity Cell is one such sphere. The logic of equality cannot be the logic of homogeneity, it has to be the logic of ‘equivalence’. This is where we tie up with an organisation like the AIF-RTE, and also in our need to enrich our experience of activism, I think we are doing alright with teaching, training and documentation aspects but the activism side has been so far lacking and we are fortunate to be able to host this meeting and learn something in return.

©Tanmoy Bhattacharya 2009

Disabling Images

Anita Ghai, Reader in Psychology, Jesus & Mary College, University of Delhi, and a well know disability scholar and activist, gave a talk on Images of Disability in the Indian Media at the Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC) of the University of Delhi on 21^st October, 2009. She spoke for about 1:45 hrs and interacted with the students from the Media, Sign Language and ICT courses run at the Centre. Many of the students present were blind and Mamta, an employee of the DU Library who has been working with the EOC for sometime, is deaf. Hidam Gaurshyam, the EOC technician for the Hearing Impaired interpreted for Mamta. From the faculty, Rama Kant Agnihotri and I were present from Linguistics.

Terminology

Anita started with clarifying the terminology involved, especially the phrase ‘Disabled Person’ (DP) and ‘Persons with Disability’ (PwD), indicating the former as the preferred term for her. The movement at the University of Leeds was mentioned in this connection.

My own observation in this regard is the confusion in terminology being used and in practice in India, especially in official documentations, must be addressed. While we have the PwD Act of 1995, we have ‘Handicapped’ quota (VH, PH, etc.), ‘Visual Impairment’ (VI), we have ‘Parking for Disabled Persons’, etc. Among the public, ‘Handicapped’ is still the most commonly used term and using ‘Physically challenged’ is the ultimate sign of political correctness. In this milieu, the Social Model of disability is a relatively modern concept, and one, for which we have to keep sensitising the public at large.

Hindi Films of the 50s and 60s

Next, Anita, discussed chronologically the major examples, first from the Hindi movies, and then from the Hindi serials on the TV. Mother India, Boot Polish, Dosti are the movies of the 50s and 60s which looked at disability from the point of view of the Charity model. However, these films also scored the point that disability is not to be ashamed of and one needn’t beg for survival and rights. In this connection, characterisation of disability in the Mythologies was seen as interesting. Dhritrashtra (being blind), Manthara (a dwarf) and Shakuni (being lame) – all characters in Mahabharata, are dominantly portrayed as negative characters, disability being something to be afraid of, something negative.

In general, the ideal concept of human is the able bodied one, as far as the media is concerned. I raised the issue that in fact, it is more than that, the media actually considers the ‘perfect body’ as the bench-mark. Anita talked about the TAB or Temporarily Able Bodied, as being the most workable notion of the human body, for her.

Hindi Films of 70s to 90s

The major films in Hindi of the 70s through 90s that used some form disability as part of the main storyline, were Koshish (Deafness), Sparsh (Blindness) and also Upkaar and Sholey, to some extent. There were many other films -- and films continue to be made on this line --- where cure of the disability is used as a major theme or a turning point in the story. The film Shaan was also mentioned in this connection where Mazhar Khan characterises locomotive disability.

Hindi Films 2000 onwards

2000 onwards, we saw films like Black, Khamoshi, Tare Zamin Pe, Guru, KANK, Koi Mil Gayaa etc. that take up disability as part of the storyline. She criticised Black for the absolutely medieval teaching techniques shown to ‘educate’ the young Rani Mukherjee. I of course hated the film because of Amitabh Bacchan’s over the top hysterical acting (for which he even got an award!!) where the only goal seemed to drown every other voice in the film through his screaming. Dhritiman’s calm and controlled performance is a very clever way of exposing the vacuity of Amitabh’s histrionics. TZP, we both agreed was absolutely wrong-footed in showing how finally ‘competition’ mattered the most. Anita told us about the panicky phone-call of one of her friends whose son is dyslexic, right after the movie became popular, saying, ‘Anita, what will happen to my son, he can’t even paint’. Someone in the audience pointed out how KMG was v-e-r-y bad. Anita talked about Venkatesan and the case in the Supreme Court related to euthanasia, and her apprehensions of a movie being made on the theme.

Hindi TV Serials

Then she moved on to the Hindi serials on TV and mentioned Apki Antara, Jyoti and Baa Bahu aur Baby in this connection, where the dominant theme seems to be how to get out of disability. These programmes also reiterate how the dis-ability of the disabled is a curse through the characters and through events in the stories.

Popular Views of Disability

In fact, it was pointed out, how various themes like ‘laughter’, ‘charity, ‘hostility’, ‘cure’, keep coming back over the years. Most importantly, disability is used only as metaphor in the media, and understanding of disability takes a back seat. Very crucially also, disability is often equated with asexuality, chopping off Suparnakha’s nose in the Ramayana is, according to this thesis, desexualising her. The same way, Amitabh’s going away after kissing Rani Mukherjee is made to show guilt – as if disabled people are not entitled to desire.

Need of the hour

She appealed for a cautioned viewing of TV programmes and films from this renewed perspective and keeping the notion of deconstruction in mind while analysing these. I pointed out that it is important here to remember the activism issue involved, since a vacuous application of deconstruction may lead one to classify disability as another form of discrimination and to therefore imply that there is nothing special with disability. Anita too outlined the importance of activism in this context.

Future of the EOC

Today (20th Oct. 2009) we celebrated the 1st Anniversary of the establishment of the DU-NTPC Foundation ICT Training Centre at the Tutorial building of the central library of the University of Delhi where the VC, DU and manager (CSR), NTPC were also present. Here is a more or less full version of the brief talk that I gave there:

John Locke’s notion of the Circumstances of Justice followed up by Rawls in the 20^th Century established “justice” as a Social Contract. However, in this free, equal and independent world, people with physical or mental impairments were not included as “collaborators”, the tradition actually conflated the two questions, (i) By whom are the society’s basic principles designed, and (ii) For whom the society’s basic principles designed. In fact, we don’t even have to go that far back in time to understand this point, it is all around us today where we find trapped in a world designed by the majority for the majority; otherwise, why would we be forced to participate in, for example, the quintessential evaluation criterion of examination which are often held at inaccessible floors, where candidates are supposed to ‘write’ the exam, or where the candidates are forced to listen and respond to questions – all these are disabling environment created by the majority for the majority. This majority unknowingly, and sometimes knowingly, ignores a vast minority. Martha Nussbaum’s was a response to this conflation. I mention Nussbaum because of the strong India connection that she has in terms of her work on underprivileged women’s development and her collaboration with Amartya Sen. Anyhow, her position is clearly outlined in her mammoth work of 2006 entitled Frontiers of Justice, an important book which is stocked in the Central library here and can be consulted by anyone. Her position is know as the Capabilities Approach where she believes that instead of picturing ourselves as rough equals making a bargain, we would be better off thinking of one another as people with varying degrees of capacity and disability, in a variety of different relationships of interdependency with one another.

This is the vision at the base of an institution such as the EOC (Equal Opportunity Cell of the University of Delhi), which, apart from working for the disabled and other marginalised groups, also becomes a centre for dissemination of knowledge about our existence, about our social behaviour.

I want to emphasise that we do not lose track of this vision in our future ventures. For this reason, we have very carefully included, except in the English course, a module sensitizing students to issues of disability. In this connection, I may mention that Dr. Anita Ghai of the Jesus & Mary College will speak on the portrayal of disability in the media as a part of the course on Media that we have introduced this year; all of you are most welcome to attend the lecture here in this hall. Similarly, the Sign Language course has a compulsory unit on the myths surrounding the deaf and Sign language. ICT is anyway designed for the VI and we are thinking further on expanding this course to also include training for the deaf. It may be mentioned that the course which started off this flagship programme of the short-term courses at the EOC, the course on “Disability and Human Rights” that was conducted from Dec. 3, 2009 to April 2009, is the most crucial instrument to deliver this goal of working together to understand better the issues of the disabled. We are planning to run the second version of that course from January 2010 for five months, as well as an advanced level course on Sign Language.

Not losing sight of the vision outlined above is also important especially when the institution of democracy as we know it is undergoing a radical restructuring as fewer people vote, elections are often overturned or even rigged, political oligarchies and MNCs covertly rule countries and a homogenized ‘dominant’ culture is marketed world-wide, because it is my firm belief that institutions such as the EOC with a focussed goal and vision will contribute significantly to policy making and also towards the way we behave socially. That is a greater goal.