Disabled students turn to foreign universities Swastika Mehta
Saturday, September 23, 2006 (New Delhi): The lack of infrastructure on campus for students who are visually impaired or hearing impaired has now forced several of them to look at foreign universities. Smriti, 22, is an M Phil student at Jawaharlal Nehru University and among the 1 per cent visually impaired students in the country to reach this educational level. But her journey so far has been a difficult one. "There are no facilities in India. I have to do everything on my own. I have to go to libraries, scan all my books. It's a struggle, visually challenged people work more than sighted people," she says. Smriti wants to make a crossover in every sense of the word. After completing her M Phil in Mythology, she plans to go to Chicago University for a doctorate in Disability Studies. "Here we don't even have books and computers. Some people are from such poor families that they don't even have a tape recorder to study from," she adds. Better infrastructure For disabled students, the West promises full fledged universities like the Gallaudet University in Washington DC for the hearing impaired and better physical infrastructure on campuses. What's more, it opens up a whole new world of job opportunities. For instance Jagdish, who is hearing impaired and a class X pass out, has with grave difficulty managed to get a job as a teacher at the School for Deaf. He earns a meagre amount of Rs 6,000 every month and has been limited by the fact that signing is not recognised as a language, like it is in the West. He was unable to study courses like Engineering and Medical Science. "Abroad, there are deaf and dumb pilots," says Jagdish. "There are only few of us who have family support and can thus afford to go abroad," adds Smriti. Looking West Twenty five-year-old Shobhan, a PhD student at JNU, took his GREs last year. He is waiting to arrange a scholarship to go to the US. Though the Centre provides scholarships to Dalit, tribal and Muslim students who want to pursue higher education abroad, there is no government scholarship for students with disabilities. "If I put it simply, we can't even walk freely here. We don't have accessibility like we have in the US," complains Shobhan. For students like Smriti and Shobhan, it's a mixture of both ambition and disillusionment that pushes them to apply to universities in the West. Ambition to find a place under the sun and disillusionment as there is lack of infrastructure in India. http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?category=National&template=Education&slug=Disabled+students+rue+lack+of+facilities&id=93668&callid=1 To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
