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.