World Disability Day
Javed Ahmad Tak
Since 1992, every year World Disability Day is being commemorated to promote awareness and mobilize support for critical issues relating to the Rights of persons with disabilities so that they are equally included in society and development. The commemoration of the day also helps to promote action to raise awareness about disability issues and draw attention to the benefits of an inclusive and accessible society for all.
In developed countries Governments take overview of developments in disability sector and plan targets for next year to minimize deficiencies in inclusion and protection of rights for persons with disabilities. There government, UN agencies, civil society organizations, academic institutions and the private sector are encouraged to partner with organizations of persons with disabilities to arrange events and activities to commemorate the Day. Every year a theme is developed or fixed to attain the target of creating more inclusion and overcoming all challenges to make persons with disabilities completely independent and thus making them productive part of the society. In our country we have so far failed to fix appropriate term for the persons with disabilities. We use a huge nomenclature including terms differently able, persons with special needs, special people, specially abled etc but still in state language word handicapped has not been completely deleted. It is still used in policy papers and sign boards of national institutes. The legal term accepted so far universally is disable people or a person with disabilities too is not used with confidence. Thus all of us can better understand when a human is called with different names his identity is completely lost and he can’t even recognize himself who he /she is? In our state mostly the day is venerated in form of an event and there is less sensitization to fix goals for a year and achieve the target to make persons with disabilities feel socially secure. As per census 2011 our state has around 361000 population of persons with disabilities but various researches depict that our state has around 6 lakhs population of persons with disabilities with 120000 orthopaedic disabled persons and around 90000 persons facing mild to severe types of mental illness disabilities. Orthopaedic disabilities are on increase due to the armed conflict and allied political disturbances. The frontier districts in our state are worst hit areas where few villages like Shahura and Hatlanga villages in Bandipur district poses at least one person with disability in every house hold. As the women and children are highly vulnerable to mental illnesses, thus thousands of episodes that claimed death of husband, father, brother or son in a family, rendered one or other family member mentally ill.
Blindness also is at a high. As per census 2011 around 68000 persons with blindness are there in the state. 92777 persons in JK have speech and hearing disabilities. Out of total 361253 disabled population there are 233973 persons with different types of disabilities belonging to Kashmir province and 127180 persons with different disabilities in Jammu province. In Kashmir province the males have 55.51% of disability and females have 44.49% of disability. In Jammu Province the male ratio is 58.91% and female ratio is 41.09%
Persons with disabilities in J&K face immense barriers thus they do not enjoy access to society on an equal basis with others, which includes areas of transportation, employment, and education as well as social and political participation.
Independent living in the community with civil and political Rights is the demand of disability sector. It gives the persons with disabilities an opportunity in decision making and to take part in policy making also. One berth reservation in Legislative council is needed to empower persons with disabilities. As per Disability Act, State Technically and coordination committees need to be formulated soon to take stock of educational, social and economic status of persons with disabilities in J&K. Our state needs to tackle the disability issues in an empathetic approach. The coming budget session should allocate 3% funds for the empowerment of persons with disabilities.
Niti Aayog has passed a circular that in all plans 3% budget should be allocated for the inclusion of persons with disabilities, so that these funds could be utilized to establish ramps, install lifts, create accessible websites for persons with disabilities, use sign boards, install warnings, make tactile footpaths, install Braille signs and other requisite accessibility tools. JK – persons with Disabilities 1998 has been operational for last 17 years, but the persons with disabilities are decades backward in the state. The law needs strong implementation in all areas, so that the changes in lives of persons with disabilities are evident and the theme framed by UN could be met, because our country has ratified the UN-Convention for the Rights of Persons with disabilities since October 2007.
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