Introduction
The issue of Social Justice is centered around equal distribution of resources. Human accomplishments and planetary inheritances must be accessible for common pursuit of exploration and human enhancement. Barriers of any kind – either natural-physical or civil-social – should not come in the way of pursuing the common interests. While accessing resources such as rights and entitlements, physiological and psychological differences unleash barriers and such barriers permeate the social fabric of our everyday life, the production and distribution practices of all types of resources remained mainly as a rhetorical/academic vocation. Such narcissistic, male- and able body-centered vocational engagement quite often functions with a sort of immunity to the critique of marginalized communities – communities which have been denied access to common resources.
In the context of thinking about common access to common resources, it becomes necessary to understand and consolidate the shared knowledge and experiences of individuals. Hence the reconciliation with their diverse practices in accessing socio-economic and cultural resources from the stand point of the inter-sectionality of marginalization, for instance the experiences of Dalits, women, aadivaasis, minorities.
Disability is found and salvaged, from simple realms of the experiences of persons with disabilities and reproduced within the discourses of relations between the individual and society, culture and language. What constitutes our attitude in relation to disability is that which is neither physiological nor psychological nor is it a simple constituent of social order but a range of identities that evolve from time to time. Disability is not a condition or a state that is particular to an individual but a catalytic terrain or a trajectory that provides a field or a body for the flow of socio-cultural attitudes. There is a felt need for a call for a network of organizations of people with disabilities to demand for their right to equality in terms of accessing resources beyond the narrow alibis of “Nationalism” to build a grid of international cooperation for peace and harmony.
Background of the Project
The DRPI-India Project on Monitoring the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first of its kind to be initiated in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, as well as Asia. This Project is aimed at monitoring the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities with the support of Field Research based on interviews with persons with disabilities, as well as of critical analysis of current national disability policy.
Prior to the launch of this Project on 2nd May 2007, Swadhikaar Center for Disabilities Information, Research and Resource Development in collaboration with Asmita Resource Center for Women and AP State Legal Services Authority, and funded by NALSAR University of Law conducted 10 Human Rights Education Workshops for Persons with Disabilities living in 10 different districts, out of the 23 in the state.
While advancing the Human Rights perspective in organizations working exclusively with persons with disabilities as well as others, Swadhikaar collaborated its endeavor with 10 Non-Government Organizations in these 10 Districts who were as follows:
- ACTIVE, Khammam
- Rural Development Trust, Ananthapur
- Action for Development, West Godavari
- Jan Kalyan, East Godavari
- Nature, Vishakapatnam
- GSRDS, Vizianagaram
- SNEHA, Krishna
- Pragathi Seva Samithi, Warangal
- Commitments, Kosgi
- Community Development Center and Indira Kranthi Padham, Ranga Reddy
In each of the districts, on an average, around 50 persons with disabilities were given these trainings on human rights. Once these trainings were completed over a period of 6 months NALSAR University of Law held a three-day Legal Literacy Workshop, in which 5 active persons from each of these 10 districts who were trained as part of the Human Rights Education Workshops was selected and given training on the legislations pertaining to the Persons with Disabilities. One of the resource persons to the training, the Administrative Officer, himself a Judge, took the decision right there in the training hall that all those who were attending the training would be enrolled as Para-Legal Volunteers of the AP State Legal Services Authority, and would take up the legal redress issues of persons with disabilities in their respective districts.
When Disability Rights Promotion International (DRPI) expressed its interest and willingness to implement a Human Rights Monitoring Project for Persons with Disabilities in the state of Andhra Pradesh and in continuation with the perseverance to promote human rights education, consultative meetings were organized with representatives of Center for Culture, Law and Society - NALSAR University of Law, National Institute for the Mentally Handicapped, AP State Legal Services Authority, Asmita Resource Center for Women and Leonard Cheshire-South Asia to operationalize the Project. These organizations, along with Swadhikaar, agreed to become the Collaborating Partners for the Project.
The first step toward operationalisation of the project involved the selection of the Project Management Team. The Management Team included members from the Center for Culture, Law and Society - NALSAR University of Law, National Institute for the Mentally Handicapped, Asmita Resource Center for Women, Mandala Vikalangula Seva Samiti – a Disabled Peoples’ Organisation, as well as the Project Coordinator and Lead Researcher for the Project.
The Project was officially launched on 2nd May 2007 with a one week long training seminar for monitors and monitoring assistants (who were most of them persons with disabilities themselves) held from 3rd May to 9th May 2007. The training, facilitated by two resource persons from Disability Rights Promotion International, provided those who attended with an understanding of disability as a human rights issue as well as knowledge and practice of interviewing techniques.
General Picture
As per the census 2001, the total number of people with disabilities in the state of Andhra Pradesh is 1,364,981. Out of them 1,050,400 (76.95 %) live in rural areas. The population of people with disabilities in urban areas is 314,581 (23.05 %). Of course, the Andhra Pradesh Government in its official website, Andhra Pradesh News, now accepts that the population of persons with disabilities in the state is 6%. For the first time, people with disabilities were enumerated based on type of disability in the year 2001. National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), another national statistical agency also enumerated the population of people with disabilities in its 58th Round of National Sample Survey in 2002. There were differences between data of census and NSSO on types of disability. Nevertheless both data reveal the fact that nearly 75% of people with disabilities reside in rural areas.
There are many movements initiated for the protection of rights of and finding solutions to the issues of persons with disabilities. These struggles have been taken up by the persons with disabilities themselves mainly to assert their rights to Life and Dignity. The main objective of the identity movements of people with disabilities is to eradicate the negative attitude towards persons with disabilities in the family and societal spheres, and in the policies of the government. At the same time, these movements stress the importance of making available opportunities for people with disabilities in all the sectors in society by the government, ensure equality not just by the government but by families and society too and ensure that appropriate and necessary measures are undertaken.
Given the colonial legacy regarding the enactment and implementation of legislations in India , even the Acts and Laws made to protect the rights of persons with disabilities tend to be based on charity and sympathy. As one of the most prominent Human Rights Proponents, Prof. Haragopal commented during his lecture as part of the “Workshop on Human Rights and Disability” on 3rd to 5th September 2005, the popular notion underlying current law is that reasons for disability are to be found in previous birth, one is born a person with disability and the solutions for this disability can be found in the next birth. This belief in a person’s Karma, or fate, is unhelpful to the cause of people with disabilities. The attitude and behavior of the society and the thinking about the family is in fact very demeaning toward the person with disabilities, which is quite saddening. Even other identity movements going on in this country, such as those around women, aborigines, Dalits (lower castes) and the poor are still far from completely comprehending and grasping of the issues of people with disabilities. All the policies and programs towards the development of people in this state by the government also do not keep in mind or focus on the problems of people with disabilities.
As has been found in the study conducted as part of “Disabled Deserve Different Deals”, a Report by Action Aid India (2001), there are thousands of people with disabilities in this state who go hungry and thirsty, not because there is no food or drinking water, but because if they did eat and drink, they do not have anyone to escort or accompany them outside to defecate. Added to this is the extreme poverty which weighs people with disabilities down. The 62 years of Indian Independence has not in any way recognized the issues facing persons with disabilities who are also citizens of this country. One graphic example to prove this is that even after all these years, neither the Central nor the State Governments have the proper statistics as to how many people with disabilities live in this country and state. The state remembers persons with disabilities only when national festivals like Independence Day, Republic Day, International Disabled Day or Mahatma Gandhi’s Birth Anniversary come up every year and the politicians and civil society organizations want to shower their pity and sympathy on people with disabilities by distributing tricycles, hearing aids, crutches and other aids and appliances. The worst thing is that they think they are doing such a major favor to persons with disabilities by taking up these programs.
In the last 10 or 15 years the State Government introduced several welfare programs including setting up Self-Help Groups for people with disabilities and increasing the amount given as pensions. These measures were introduced as strategies to promote the empowerment of persons with disabilities. However, given the limited amounts of these pensions (500 Rupees a month), in these times of increase in the prices of all commodities, paucity of food grains and ever increasing inflation, this small amount is hardly enough for the barest of sustenance for anyone, let alone persons with disabilities. By increasing the pension amount, it might be of some solace to people with disabilities but it is nothing but eyewash by the government and does nothing else to actively address the problems they face.
The transport services available to all in the cities, towns and villages at present, especially the vehicles used for transport, are not even accessible to the people with physiological differences. The elderly, pregnant women, women carrying babies in their arms, very young children and people with disabilities have to face many problems when they travel by these vehicles because of their inappropriate designs. For example, a woman without the use of her arms or legs, an aged man who has to walk with the support of a stick or a young man or woman who have to walk with either a baby or a set of books in their arms find it extremely difficult to get into buses, auto rickshaws or trains, equally with the others and travel without a hassle. In addition to this, there are other problems like buses that never stop at the bus stand, heavy crowds in each bus stand waiting to get into the buses that never come on time, and rise in the rates of auto rickshaws due to the rise in prices of diesel. All these only tend to compound the problems for people with disabilities.
More and more, as development touches everything, the buildings are also becoming higher and higher. But due to the frequent power cuts, the lifts and elevators in these buildings cannot work and the people using these buildings have to climb the stairs which is next to impossible for able bodied persons, let alone for persons with disabilities. In fact, the official demographic statistics regarding persons with disabilities is much less than the actual figures and the process through which the data regarding the population with disabilities has to be improved by the State Government. There are not enough medical experts, equipment and more than all this, funds are completely inadequate for the identification of persons with disabilities, all of which goes to show the negligent and uncaring attitude of the government policies for people with disabilities.
The government scheme of distributing bus passes to people with disabilities uses discrimination criteria and does not sanction them to one and all.
Though both the World Bank and the Department for International Development, Government (DFID) of Great Britain have extended huge amounts (billions of dollars) as grants and loans to the State Government towards social development in the rural and urban areas of this state for the last few years, even at this time the Indira Kranthi Padham, the Project through which these funds are disbursed for various schemes and programs, has failed to identify all the persons with disabilities in the rural areas of this State and it continues to fail in this task. One of the saddest facts is that very few funds are allocated under the State Budget for the welfare of people with disabilities and most of this money is spent on salaries and administrative expenses of the staff working in the concerned offices for Disabled Welfare.
According to “Disabled Deserve Different Deals”, a Report by Action Aid India (2001) 87% of the Budget allocated for people with disabilities is spent on salaries for the staff in the Disability Welfare Department and other administrative costs. The other 13% is spent for the running of several special schools, hostels for people with disabilities, distribution of books for the students with disabilities, aids and appliances, health care and identification of persons with disabilities all of which has to be accomplished with this small amount of money. Most persons with disabilities do not even have the basic information about how to access the most important things relating to themselves like health, education and livelihoods.
The hostels and residential schools established specially for the education of visual impaired and speech and hearing impaired children in the name of special facilities and training, have become worse than prisons, due to severe lack of funds and finances as well resources,. The State Budget had reached One Lakh Crore Rupees and the Chief Minister of the State proudly proclaims that 46 Thousand Crores from the above Budget are available as part of the 5-Year Plan from the Central Government (Source: Andhra Pradesh News). If the 3% reservation protected for people with disabilities in the People with Disabilities Act, 1995 were to be implemented, then at least 3000 Crore Rupees of the State Budget and 1600 Crore Rupees from the Plan Budget, that is 4600 Crore Rupees in total should be allocated for the welfare of people with disabilities in this state through several development programs. The reality is that barely 3% of this amount of 4600 Crores, that is 150 Crores, is just about allocated for the programs for persons with disabilities. The Persons with Disabilities Act also stipulates that 3% of the Budgets allocated for each of the Departments should be set aside for taking up the concerned programs for persons with disabilities but to date, this has not been implemented at all.
At present both the Central and State Governments can spend the allocated funds at the rate of One Rupee per person with disability. That is why many voluntary organizations are encouraged to get funds from outside the country to work with persons with disabilities.
In addition to all this, the State Government has increased the amount given to people with disabilities as disability pension from 200 to 500 Rupees, with the financial and administrative support of the Ministry of Rural Development, to be disbursed also through the functionaries of the same Department. The State Government is also planning to increase the money given for scholarships for children with disabilities who are studying in schools and colleges, equal to the amount given to students from lower castes and aborigines, which is unprecedented.
Despite these seeming advances, people with disabilities all over the state have for decades been questioning why the State Government is not showing any interest in implementing the adopted legislation and schemes. Why are the programs relating to people with disabilities not taken up at all or if taken up, done so negligently and with such lack of enthusiasm? Why are the funds allocated for the welfare of people with disabilities proving to be not at all useful in fulfilling the simple, basic needs of people with disabilities? Why are the hostels and homes meant for persons with disabilities turned into hell-holes? Why are the apartment buildings constructed for people with disabilities left to disintegrate, with no care? Why are the housing schemes both at the Central and State levels not sanctioned to persons with disabilities? When people with disabilities do not have any source of livelihood, how could they get the money to invest in constructing the subsidized housing, even if the government by mistake did sanction that scheme to them, and subsequently repay the loan amount to the government? What about the fate of persons with disabilities when the schemes are merely to be seen on paper, as part of the media propaganda, and where even the poorest without disability are finding it so hard to access these schemes? Answers for these questions are yet to be found. Some people with disabilities are getting involved in movements protesting this very negligence and lack of care. They run risks in doing this - some victims of police beatings and even arrests and most importantly they become victims insults and discrimination. They are protesting against the government machinery which is unable to spend the funds allocated properly or on time.
A protest was held with the demands that the Disability pension should be increased from Rs.200 to Rs.1500/-, the Reservation for Disabled should be increased from 3 to 7%, a national level Commission for Persons with Disabilities should be established and persons with disability should be appointed as the Disability Commissioner, an enactment should be made and implemented against the Atrocities on Persons with Disabilities as part of Punitive Action, scholarship amounts should be enhanced to that of SC, ST and BC students and fees reimbursement for the students with disabilities. Also activists with disabilities protested that a Government Order released by the State Government in 1984 (but never implemented) which said that any land for housing identified should allocate the said land to persons with disability first, should be immediately implemented.
Other demands included that people with disabilities should be taken in as Co-Option members in the Gram Panchayat, Mandal (Block) Parishad and Zilla (District) Parishad and Municipalities, and that Life Insurance should be made in the name of all the 60 lakh people with disabilities in the State, for a worth of 1 Lakh Rupees per person. The banks give a loan subsidy of 30% to lower caste persons like the SCs and STs whereas persons with disabilities are given only 3% subsidy. Persons with disabilities should be given priority when the government allocates housing sites under the Indiramma Scheme. These houses should be constructed in such a way that they are disability- friendly, and where they are constructed in the cities and towns, the houses on the ground floor should be allotted to people with disabilities and in the villages they should be allocated very close to the roads. All these were published in the front pages of all the newspapers in the state, be it Telugu or English Dailies on 27th November, 2007. As a result of this strong protest and movement by persons with disabilities all over the state, the Government of Andhra Pradesh issued several Government Orders, including:
- Disability Pension is enhanced from Rs.200 to Rs. 500
- Priority is to be given to Persons with Disabilities in the allocation of housing under the Indiramma Housing Scheme
- Hostel Mess Charges are to be enhanced for students with disabilities on par with the lower caste students (SC or ST students) from Rs.330/- to Rs.700/-
- Re-imbursement of tuition fees and special fees are to be on par with SC and ST students at all levels of education
Just as every other citizen of this country and state, persons with disabilities also have the right to equal participation in the economic, social and cultural development achieved in the state. The Identity Movement has proved already that persons with disabilities have the strength of will to question and critique the state government’s policies, discrimination and negligence regarding them. When people in the villages have to migrate in search of livelihoods to the cities all over the country they leave their relatives with disabilities in their homes behind, as they are considered to be a burden. There are thousands of poor parents in this state who leave their children with elderly family members and with great regret that they are unable to even properly feed their children with disabilities. Similarly there are thousands of parents who cannot afford to ensure medical and health care to their children, either born with disabilities or who acquire disabilities due to disease or accidents and are forced to resort to quacks and witchcraft practitioners due to their extreme poverty, to get their children ‘cured’ but in fact end up pushing their children into greater peril.
The number of babies born with disabilities or people who acquire disabilities due to chemical pollution, fluorine, genetically modified seeds used for cultivation and adulterated pesticides and fertilizers being used for cultivation of crops [and accidents] has been on a steep rise in the last few years (from The Eenadu [the leading Regional Telugu Language Newspaper in the State], 21st October, 2008). They are living lonely lives, away from the community, because of the attitude of family members. Is it not the lack in the policies that our brothers and sisters, young and old alike are forced to live lives like this just because of their disability? The political representatives and the government must become sensitive to the issues of people with disabilities and give them opportunities. Or else they should bring in changes in the policies and plans, like the disability movement has been demanding to increase the government funding and bring in more positive measures for the welfare of people with disabilities.
People with disabilities are to be found in all social strata, castes, classes, regions and sexes. All those who consider themselves as able-bodied persons can acquire a disability some time during their life time. The government’s policies today make a laughing stock of both people with disabilities and people without disabilities alike. The UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came as a fitting reply and response to all the issues faced by people with disabilities all over the world. India is one of the signatories and has also ratified the Convention. Before this, India had four important pieces of legislation which had been enacted in the recent past for the protection of rights and welfare of people with disabilities in this country. These are the:
- Mental Health Act, 1987
- the Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1991
- the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Full Participation and Protection of Rights) Act, 1995 and
- the National Trust for Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act, 2000.
But except on a very few rare occasions, these pieces of legislation have more or less remained on paper and have not been implemented. It is not an exaggeration at all to say that an overwhelming proportion of the judges, magistrates and lawyers and well qualified civil servants do not even know of the enactment of the People with Disabilities Act. What is more surprising is that the majority of persons with disabilities themselves or their families, especially those from the rural areas, do not know that such legislation, meant for the protection of their rights exists. According to the agreement under the United Nations Convention (CRPD), once India has signed and ratified it, appropriate changes and amendments have to be brought in the national legislations and India is required to report to the United Nations on the implementation of the Convention (CRPD). Yet months after signing the Convention, the Central Government is just now taking steps or measures toward the amendment of these dated legislations, which do not meet the standards of the Convention (CRPD). There has been a systematic attempt by the governments at both the Center and the State to shrug off their responsibilities and thrust the very same responsibility for the welfare of people with disabilities over to private agencies, voluntary organizations and even to individual persons with disabilities themselves. It is the responsibility of the citizens to protest this move by the government and ensure that it comes up with more pro-people with disabilities policies, with greater acceptance of its responsibilities. There is an opportunity here for the Central and State governments to look towards a future in which people with disabilities can be contributing members of society, integrated into the social structure. It would be an advance for the government to take up this challenge.
The Disabled Welfare Department was set up in this state along with all the other states in the country in order to protect the rights of persons with disabilities but due to the paucity of funds (and even if funds are allocated as they are not made available in a timely manner) the Department has been systematically failing to extend the necessary services to persons with disabilities. The Financial Corporation for people with disabilities initiated at the National level set up for providing for livelihoods for this group of the population has today become completely useless, exactly because of this reason. Based on the people with disabilities Act, Coordination Committees have to be set up at the State level with eminent personalities, like judges, lawyers and other legal experts, civil servants and representatives of civil society organizations. Disabled People Organizations should be members in this Committee and give/evolve guidelines for the Disability Welfare Department to implement them. But rarely are these guidelines taken into advisement. Due to these prevailing conditions, the Department ends up distributing aids and appliances to a few people with disabilities and that too with the help and funding of the voluntary organization working with persons with disabilities on Independence or Republic Days. But the irony is that there are many persons with disabilities who are yet to get these aids and appliances.
Today there are many NGOs and voluntary organizations which are running Community Rehabilitation programs for persons with disabilities in the state. There are many institutions here which are getting funds from international development agencies and using the same well by taking up many development programs for people with disabilities and fulfilling their needs. The activities the government is limiting itself to are the distribution of ration cards, running vocational training courses and media propaganda. The media advertisements that the government publishes - that its development schemes are being accessed by many people - are accessible to and understood by very few people. The question here is whether there is any person with a disability who has been successful in accessing these schemes. For any common person to access these schemes, in addition to filling out the paper work, that person needs to have other ‘qualifications’. That person should be close and intimate with either the local political leader or government official, it is not enough that he or she belongs to a vulnerable community. The person with a disability should have the additional qualifications of evoking pity, sympathy and charity. In some cases, it has been reported that they have had to pay money on bribes to government officials as well as the political leaders. In addition to this, it has been reported that some people without disabilities who access the schemes for persons with disabilities are producing illegal medical certificates in this state.
There are many occasions in which persons with disabilities have run around offices trying to access the schemes, certificates and loans and lost hope but were lured again by officials and middlemen, in order to drain them of their hard earned money, as can be observed from the one reported case from the field study where one person interviewed says,
The government really does not want to pay attention that is what I think. Added to this, the amount of corruption and bribery in the departments has become so rampant, it has gone way out of the hands of the common man whom the administration is supposed to provide services.
Or another person who says,
Nothing moves without the grease of bribes, no work gets done. There is no State, in fact without bribes, they are least bothered about those who might not be able to give bribe amounts. The very first thing they look for is the bribe money.
It is time to make people understand that to humiliate persons with disabilities is to humiliate and insult the very Constitution of India and the policies of this country, that there is a need to come out of this silent tolerance of humiliation, discrimination and negligence in this helpless way.
Women with Disabilities
Women with disabilities throughout the country face multiple forms of discrimination and their condition in the state of Andhra Pradesh is not different. Women with disabilities are denied education and health care as a matter of fact. They have been denied even a single square meal a day and proper clothes to wear. They routinely become victims of the violence and molestation of able-bodied men in society. They are pushed to live the lives of living dead, bemoaning every moment as to why they have to be alive. They are made to do all the chores in the house, washing clothes, the dishes, cleaning the house, cooking the food for everyone, take care of very young children in the house baby-sitting, all this just for a bowl of gruel, without asking anything for themselves. A woman with a disability is an object of ridicule and humiliation for everyone, for family members, for society and even the government. Women with disabilities are not even called with their given names in many cases, their disability being their only name and identity. No one is ready to get married to a woman with disability. In many parts of the state, women with disabilities have to settle to being wives to men who are already married once or twice, bearing the violence of and torture of their husbands and other family members and live only waiting for death to take it all away.
And the lives of women with intellectual or psychological disabilities are even worse as they are driven out of their homes by their family members and they live on the streets, as beggars and face all forms of violence from just about everyone, without any protection at all. As most often there are no toilets or bathrooms inside the houses in the rural areas, not just women with eisabilities but women in general have to face many discomforts and humiliation both in the house and outside, in the community and at the same time, they are becoming victims to many gynecological related health problems. There are thousands of girls with disabilities who had to drop out of schools and colleges because there are no proper toilet facilities in those buildings. (Source: People with Disabilities in India: Commitments to Outcomes, The World Bank Report, 2007)
Children with Disabilities
Addressing systematic discrimination has a hitch which may be characterized as the inadequate compliance with existing patriarchal caste and class hierarchy along side of the quality of governance that is always already defined by the experiences of the “able” bodied persons. The hitch/inadequate compliance is important to examine to find solutions to the problem of infringements to the notion of education for all.
According to the ICESCR Committee, the measures that States have to take to meet their obligations under each Covenant right may be divided into three levels or types: obligations to respect, to protect and to fulfil. These levels or types have been explored by the Committee in the context of the right to education, the right to food and the right to health. Focusing on the Right to education, the obligation to respect the right to education requires States to refrain from adopting any measures that would hinder or prevent the enjoyment of education. The obligation to protect the right to education requires them to ensure that no other actor interferes with the enjoyment of education. Lastly, the obligation to fulfil, the extent of which is subject to the wording of each right, requires States to fulfil or provide for the realization of the right to education.
Though the concept of Education for All addresses the immediate need of enrolling all children in Primary and Secondary Schools, there have been many systemic hurdles, ranging from individual to governments. These hurdles are in the rural areas, and particularly in urban slums, and they infringe upon the rights of a large number of children’s to education.
If children with disabilities are born to parents who cannot take care of them, they may try to get rid of all their children, just so they can get rid of the child with disability too! The parents in these cases cannot be blamed as they have to depend solely on their own hard labor to survive from day to day and they live in extreme poverty. Girls and boys with disabilities born into such families have to suffer the most. As the bare minimum educational facilities are rarely accessible to them even if they were to access education at the local level (and as they often would have to move out of their villages and towns to the cities for higher education, which is next to impossible, both socially and economically) they are unable to find appropriate livelihoods, so that they can lead their lives with self-respect. If they were given encouragement and equal participation in society, then they would be able to contribute to a better society by bringing in better policies and programs beneficial to one and all.
Livelihoods
Economic rights are an important facet of human rights and, broadly pertain to the creation of opportunities and facilities for enabling human beings to earn their livelihood in fair and just conditions established on the principle of equality and equity. Economic rights envisage a system of social security in old age, sickness and similar circumstances. The jurisprudence on social, economic and cultural rights in India over the last two decades has gone far beyond the issue of non-discrimination. The Supreme Court has established a harmonious relation between the fundamental right to life and many, so called, non-justiciable rights envisaged in the Directive Principles of the Constitution of India.
As it has been shown time and again, if any person is given an opportunity to live independently with self-respect and dignity, people from all walks of life, irrespective of their differences in terms of ability or disability, gender, class, caste, region or language have come out with innovative ideas. Particularly, in the context of opportunities of employment guarantee that gives such self-respect and dignity within the family and society, people with disabilities have often outgrown the stereotypical opinion of employers or governance. In the rural areas, there are a number of instances where people with a lack of one or more than one limb or lack of hearing ability or vision or of intellectual disabilities are found working as part of the labor force, ranging from agricultural sector to construction and industry on the one hand, and on the other, management of community health, sanitation and hygiene, gardening or community forestry.
Governance and Disability
Communities and individuals from the margins of critical knowledge systems often gave momentum to the people’s organizations, policy makers and institutions of governance to defuse prevarication and to concretize their roles and responsibilities in understanding the communities of persons with disabilities and planning for their survival with dignity. For example, there have been several shifts in perspective in understanding how disability is conceptualized and contextualized. From an 18th century medical approach, which defined the person with disability as “suffering” from an impairment or a loss that needed treatment, to the present when we see a 180-degree shift to perceiving persons with disability as citizens with the same rights and entitlements as other able-bodied persons, the journey has been a long one. However, as the debates on disability move towards the development and human rights approach, the people’s organizations, policy makers, NGOs, disability rights activists and donor agencies have begun to re-examine the role of the state not as a mere provider of welfare services for people with disabilities.
Increasingly, this endeavor has come to recognize that disability needs to converge with the larger context of the development agenda like health, education, employment and poverty alleviation programs. Facilitating the concept of convergence and integrated service delivery for people with disabilities within the existing services of the government is, therefore, an agenda for development that could result in the emergence of models that are to scale and sustainable in the long run.
Caste, class, and age biases and gender equity are indicators for appraisal in understanding social justice and equal distribution of resources. To understand the abilities of persons belonging to the above social groups, a critical examination of the experiences of the “cultured” silence and passivity is worth exploring. This passivity is really the strength of these groups and hence makes the negotiations possible to circumvent fear, threat, hunger, and neglect while at the same time constantly questioning the power relations. The issues related to people with disabilities cut across all forms of negotiations from within and remain symbiotic at the outset as a socio-cultural entity in the society.
Human Rights and Disability
Persons with disabilities frequently live in deplorable conditions, and face physical and social barriers, which prevent their integration and full participation in the community development. The situation is not different in the state of Andhra Pradesh where millions of adults and children are segregated, deprived of virtually all their rights, and sometimes lead wretched and marginalized lives.
Although the international disability community has spoken of disability as a human rights issue for several decades, not all persons with disabilities view discrimination and abuse in terms of international human rights instruments. For some people, discrimination and abuse have become normal, everyday occurrences that are part of their lives as persons with disabilities.
The right to live is a universal norm. Persons with disabilities cannot be treated as an exception to this norm. Yet this fact needs to be emphasized – for the universal norm often appears disregarded in action. From the legal point of view, there are three implications to this statement: (a) the recognition that persons with disabilities have specific rights; (b) respect for these and all their rights; and (c) the obligation to do what is necessary to enable persons with disabilities to enjoy the effective exercise of all their human rights on an equal footing with others.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights refers specifically to the rights of persons with disabilities. Article 1 declares that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. There is a joint responsibility at the national and international level to ensure these rights are translated into concrete action. The right to equality is one of the most fundamental human rights norms. The guarantee of equality is reflected in several provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights (ICESCR) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the Constitution of India and other national laws for people with disabilities.