Posting a report of seminar held recently. Will look forward to suggestions and comments.
- Shampa Sengupta Kolkata A seminar was organised by Sruti Disability Rights Centre in Kolkata recently on “Disability Policy in India”. The participants included disabled people, members of DPOs, parents groups, human rights activists, members of womens groups, disability NGOs, education network, mental health groups as well as representatives from lawyers and law colleges. The National Policy for Persons with Disabilities itself says that “Every five years a comprehensive review will be done on the implementation of the National Policy. A document indicating status of implementation and roadmap for five years shall be prepared based on the deliberations in a national level convention. State Governments will be urged to take steps for drawing up State Policy.” The organisers, at the outset, expressed concern that though five years have passed since this policy was announced, a review of the policy has not been undertaken. They also conveyed disquiet over the fact that West Bengal is yet to frame a disability policy of its own. The purpose of this seminar was to deliberate on these two issues. In the pre-lunch session Smt Aloka Guha, former Chairperson of National Trust of India said that the existing national Policy is useless and obsolete. She declared that she even had forgotten that a Policy exists and the organisers had to convince her to speak about it as no one even refers to it. The policy, in her opinion, was but a replica of the PWD Act of 1995. She pointed out that the existing policy does not talk about mental illness at all. Shri Muralidharan, Asst. Convener of the National Platform for Rights of Disabled said that “given the enormous dimension and complex nature of the problem of disability in the country and the failure of existing policies and programmes to address them adequately, there is an urgent need for a re-orientation of the policy framework of disability”. He pointed out that the government is repeating the same mistake that it committed in 1995. Before enacting the new law, the policy has to be revised, he said. He also pointed out to the lack of sufficient allocations to the sector and the absence of separate ministry for disability affairs. The post-lunch session was more focused on gender and mental health issues, which according to the organisers are amongst the most neglected area in the disability arena. Prof Asha Hans, Vice-President of Shanta Memorial Rehabilitaion Centre and former Director of womens Studies, Utkal University she spoke about the violence and discrimination that women with disabilities face and stressed on need to formulate specific provisions to reduce these. Dr. Alok Sarin, Psychiatrist by profession and the member of National Mental Health Policy Group highlighted the various achievements, problems and failures of the District Mental Health Programme launched by the Government of India. He mentioned that large amounts of money are lying unutilised due to a faulty mental health policy. He stressed on the need to have discussions with as many stakeholders as possible, to bring in changes at the policy level. The seminar ended with a discussion in which all participants unanimously accepted that 1. It is important to review the existing Disability Policy keeping in mind the mandate of the UNCRPD. 2. The policy should be reviewed prior to amending/making new laws on disability. 3. Further discussions have to be held at the state level with a view to framing a policy for West Bengal. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ 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
