To understand the Persons With Disabilities Act in a gender prospective, it is very important to first establish the basis and framework within witch the Act has to be contextualised.the norms of the framework lie in the ground realities of societal functioning i.e. how society views and places women and disability within social hierarchies and interactions. Within Indian society, the women’s role has always been viewed as a subservient one. Traditionally women have been excluded from economic power and decision making. The same applies to persons with disabilities. When we look at the Indian scenario, a woman with disability is doubly marginalized. Firstly, she is marginalized because, as a woman, she is not given an equal status to a man. Secondly, if she happens to be a disabled woman, she is further negated as a person. If she is poor and disabled, her third rung of marginalization is added. We are also aware of the various efforts that Women’s organizations have been making for the last 30 years to achieve equal status for women and the kind of patchy success that have been achieved in this area.women are still vulnerable, open to discrimination, have common concerns of safety, lack of facilities—such as child care and adequate maternity care, are economically less remunerated for the same work and, last, but not the least, tend not to own or inherit immovable property. To my mind, in this background, The Persons With Disabilities,Act, is particularly significant even though the Act is not gender specific. The exercise of rights leading to equal status in one area creates an understanding of rights in other areas. The Persons Withv Disabilities Act, has to be understood in the context of the constitution particularly articles 14 and 15. article 14 states that all people shall have equality before the law and equal protection of the law. This implies that there shall be no differenciation or discrimination between equals and the the law shall treat them equally when it comes to providing protection or meeting out punishments. Article 15 is far more specific as it prohibits discrimination among other things on the basis of sex. Women with disabilities, as discussed earlier, unfortunately face discrimination not only due to disability but also their gender. Our constitution provides for what is termed substantive equality. In other words it recognizes that equal treatment of people who are unequal can’t be termed true equality.reservations in government jobs guaranteed under Articles 16 is one such provision. This recognition of a disadvantage stemming from a hostile or unfriendly environment witch is to be compensated in order to create equality is the basis of the Disabilities Act. The provisions of the Disabilities Act deal with every aspect needed to bring about the true equality of persons with disability to a normal citizen. To achieve this role, the Disabilities Act provides a wide array of rights such as education, employment, special facilities for use and access in public transport system, civic amenities and public buildings and places, preferential allotment for setting up business and factories and own houses for building special schools and recreation centres, prevention and early detection of disabilities, rehabilitation and social security, research and human resource development on disability issues, recognition of institutions for disabled and setting up of dedicated authorities at centre and state levels for implementing the Act. In the provisions relating to the education, the Act provides for free education to every disabled child till the age of 18 i.e. as opposed to the educational guarantee up to the age 14 for every child in this country. The Act further provides that such education shall be provided in “appropriate environment” means providing education in an accessible format in integrated schools. Accessible format implies that facilities to aid learning are made available to every disabled students taking in to account their disability and their mode of access to knowlege i.e. for a visually impaired student it would mean access to talking software with computers or Braille books. Wherever, integration is not possible, special schools have to be set up and equipped for vocational training. The mandate of the Act is thatdisabled student in every part of the country should have access to these schools. For this purpose,scholarships, supply books, uniforms and other materials, transport facilities for disabled children and financial incentives to their guardians to enable them to attend schools. In recognition of difficulties faced by disabled persons in accessing employment, reservation in government,jobs is provided to the extent of 3%, 1% each for persons with blindness or low vision, hearing impairment and locomotor disability and cerebral palsy. If no candidate is available to fill the reserved vacancy, it has to be carried forward to the next recruitment year or fill by interchange in the three categories. The Act also provides for special employment exchanges to facilitate ddisabled people in finding employment slots as well as creation of non-handicapping environment at work. As a measure of social security under the Act, anyone who has been registered with the special employment exchange for a period of two years without getting employment is eligible for disability pension. Recognizing the possibility of discrimination Government is prohibited by the Act from the dispensing with, reducing in rank, decreasing pay of and denying promotion to any employee acquiring a disability. Most disabled persons find lack of facilities, in access and for commuting the biggest hurdles in moving out of their homes.to address this issue the Act clearly defines access in terms of adapted rail compartments, buses, vessels and aircrafts witch includes adapted toilets and accessability of wheel chair users, installation of auditory traffic signals, engraving on zebra crossing and edges of railway platforms, slopes and pavements, appropriate symbols of disability and warning signals for the disabled at appropriate places. The government also provides for concessions in rail, road and air transport for persons with disability.
Disabled persons are also eligible for preferential allotment of land at concessional rates for the following purposes: Setting up of any business, establishing of factory, special schools and special recreational and research centre. The government has also been enjoined to provide assistive aids and appliances. Besides, this disabled gets 3%reservation in all poverty alleviation schemes such as, Indira Awas Yojna, The Rural Employment Guarantee Act. In recognition of the vulnerability of people with disabilities, The Act envisages schemes for giving unemployment allowances to people registered with special employment exchange for more than two years. It is in this background that insurance scheme or security schemes for govt. employees with disabilities have been framed and are now available to persons with disabilities and also persons who are parents or guardians of a person with disability. Perhaps,one of the most neglected areas to address by the Act is rehabilitation. The scope of the Act in relation to the rehabilitation is extremely broad and far reaching as it talks about reaching and maintaining optimal physical sensory, intellectual, psychiatric social functional levels. To achieve this end, the importance of research in rehabilitation techniques including job identifications, accessability and aids and appliances feature.another neglected area of disabilities is their preventionand early detection. A major amount of disability can be prevented or halted if diagnosed early enough and given the proper treatment. The Act provides for surveys, investigation and research on causes of disability and promotion of methods of preventing disability including screening all children once a year to identify “at risk” cases and increasing hygiene and sanitation awareness. Apart from this, Act also sets up an entire administrative machinery consisting of co-ordination committee witch decides policy and the Executive Committee witch implements that policy both at the centre and the states. One of the most important provision of the Act is the creation of hierarchy of posts of Commissioner Disabilities. Each state has one commissioner, designated for disabilities who is empowered to hear all grievances related to people with disabilities and has powers of Court when it comes to asking for submission of evidence. At the national level there is a provision for a Chief Commissioner and a Dy. Chief Commissioner Persons with Disability. These were some of the salient points of the Disabilities Act. However, no discussion on any Act is complete without a mention of responcibilities of protecting the rights that emanate from the legislation. Any legislation can only give its beneficiaries a statement of the rights it makes available to them; it is for the beneficiaries to subsequently come forward and take remedial action whenever anyone of these rights is infringed or violated. Traditionally any marginalized group in society fails to exercise it right to fight against violation of any right accruing to it. As discussed earlier, disabled women are doubly if not triply marginalized and therefore, are more vulnerable to inaction in the assertion of their rights. My sincere hope is that in engaging with the Disabilities Act, disabled women will achieve success in becoming proactive in relation to their rights not only in the area of disability but in all spheres of life. By Roma Bhagat thanks, mukesh jain. 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
