Paying a price for choosing to live in safety Sahana Charan
258 people suffer varying degrees of hearing impairment in Alipur in Kolar district Mohammed Taqi (right) and relatives at his workshop in Alipur. - Photo: K. Gopinathan Bangalore: The loud and unpleasant clamour that the gemstone polishing equipment makes does not seem to bother 18-year-old Mohammed Taqi as he busies himself in cutting and polishing stone after stone on it. For that matter most of the members in his family are oblivious to its jarring noise, or indeed to any other noise, loud or otherwise. For, 10 members of Taqi's family, including himself, his parents, three siblings, and five nieces and nephews, are profoundly deaf. Theirs is one of the many families suffering the same condition in this remote village (Alipur) in Gowribidanur taluk of Kolar district. Of the nearly 14,000 people of the village, 258 suffer varying degrees of hearing impairment. This has been established by a survey done by the Office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and the Grameena Abhyudaya Seva Samsthe (GASS), a voluntary organisation working in that area. The affected persons belong to Shia Muslim community. "We have done a door-to-door survey of the families in the village and found that of the 2,550 households, people in 500 households are affected with one form of disability or the other. "Of these, impaired hearing and physical handicaps are the most common, followed by low vision," said B. Venkatesh of GASS. This preliminary survey seems to suggest that consanguineous marriages (marriage among close relatives) may be the cause for the high incidence of hearing disability in the village, according to a report submitted by the State Assistant Commissioner for Disabilities Ishrath Afza to the Chief Commissioner for Disabilities, New Delhi, and the Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare Services. "We have asked GASS to conduct another detailed survey to establish the extent of disability in the village. We have also asked the Ministry to include Alipur village in the National Programme for Prevention of Deafness so that awareness can be created among the villagers about the need to avoid marriage among close relatives," Ms. Israth told The Hindu. Syed Haider Hussain, a senior community leader and president of the Anjuman-e-Jaffariya Trust, admits that consanguineous marriages are taking place in the village which could be the cause of the disability. "We do not want to send our daughters out of the village as they may not be looked after well. There have been instances where girls from the village were married off to suitors from our community outside. But in most cases they returned because they were thrown out, as their husbands were alcoholic, or the girls were ill treated. Since we don't have such vices here, we feel our daughters will be protected," he said. The village has a low crime rate, zero alcohol consumption, and no prostitution. But the village seems to have paid a heavy price for its insularity. Born of closely related parents, the children in the village are now facing untold misery. The trust helps the needy in the village and ensures that every family in the community lives in a concrete house. The disability factor apart, Alipur is a fairly prosperous village, where families encourage the children, girls included, to go to school. It has five anganwadis, one Primary Health Centre, a government high school, a college for women and four private educational institutions. The village even has its own television channel, called Ali Channel, in which programmes are strictly monitored. http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/28/stories/2007052816270100.htm Vikas Kapoor, MSN ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype ID: dl_vikas Mobile: (+91) 9891098137. 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
