Thank you very much Sanchit for sharing this article which I think for the first time has delved deep in to exposing painful experience of women with blindness who reside in various so called private hostels in the capital. I've given the original title with some addation in the subjectline. safe accommodation for blind women is the desperate need of the hour otherwise, quality education and employment will remain distant dream for majority of them. This article is worth-preserving thanks again this will help me in my research titled: Persons with Disability act 1995: a Study in Delhi And Sanchit, I am pasting this article and sharing on other lists as well for more wider readership to let people know the harsh realities of life of women with blindness. Article Begins Seema had just one dream: an independent and financially secure life. It took some time for this feisty visually impaired teenager from a middle-class family in the northeast to convince her parents that she, too, needed to go to school like her siblings. Finally, her father packed her bags and brought her to a school-cum-hostel for blind women in Vikaspuri, Delhi. Seema was happy and certain that she would become a lawyer someday.
That was six years ago. Sitting in a dark, dingy room on the first floor of a hostel for blind women, the political science student says, “Perhaps what I wanted to do would just remain a dream.” It seems Seema is not the only one with shattered dreams; her 36 hostel mates apparently share her sentiment. Finding a decent roof above their heads is what drains these blind women of their resolve. Seema's hostel is a damp dilapidated building in Sant Nagar, Delhi. While the food they get is far from palatable, the rooms are overcrowded. The open gutters that lead to the hostel get flooded during monsoons, making it impossible for people like Seema to navigate their way. But what has hurt this 21-year-old most is the attitude of people on the road: she says most of them try to take advantage of her disability. “But what makes me so helpless is the fact that I cannot even see them. Earlier, I was living a claustrophobic life and here I am fighting every moment to keep my self-esteem and my dignity intact. I want to fight, but ‘the war' seems never ending. And I am not sure, if I can ever win it,” she says. Another hostel for the blind in Nathupura is home to six women who study at Delhi University, about 15km away. Every day they have to walk a kilometre and a half to reach the highway, cross the road to board a shared auto-rickshaw and then take a bus to the university. It takes no less than an hour and a half and they need at least three ‘considerate' people who can help them cross the road and board an auto-rickshaw and the right bus. The daily ordeal apart, their hostel is dingy and reeks of rotten food. The rooms are dirty, and a bed and an open shelf count as furniture. The staircase to the rooms on the first floor is narrow. To add to this, the windows are not covered, denying them privacy, says an inmate. The rooms get overcrowded during the summer holidays when other college hostels close for vacations and their inmates, too, come here. Every year, around 500 blind students seek admission at Delhi University, which has 15 per cent reservation for students with disability. But unfortunately, the university hostel has just 3 per cent reservation. Also, the annual charges for the hostel mess ranges from Rs.35,000 to Rs.80,000, which is not affordable for many. In all, there are about 1,500 disabled students studying at DU. Of these, hardly 200 students live in hostels provided by colleges. The rest are left to fend for themselves. Surprisingly, the government does not have any provision to provide accommodation for blind women students. (The state runs Seva Kutir for blind men.) This has led to a spurt in the number of hostels for women by NGOs, most of which are not registered under Section 56 of the PWD Act and are located in underdeveloped areas like Sant Nagar, Begampur, Nihalpur, Rama Nagar, Burari and Nathupura. Lalita, a political science student, stays in one of the hostels in Burari, run by a blind couple. She pays just Rs.500 a month for the accommodation and food. But there is problem, she says. “They expect us to go for these fund-raising exercises on holidays. They are not concerned about our studies. We are expected to go to such events even during exams,” she says. In their defence, the people who run these hostels say they are hard-pressed for money and cannot do any better than offering the women a place to live. “I sell timetables at the old Delhi railway station and earn Rs.3,000 to Rs.4,000 every month. To run this hostel, I get funds from local businessmen. I need at least Rs.15,000 to run the hostel,” says Ranjan Kumar, 35, a former Delhi University student, who is also visually impaired. “With this money, I can't provide any better facilities." Not just unkempt, most of these accommodations are insecure, too, exposing these women to myriad dangers, including sexual assault. “On days when most of the women go out, I feel an unknown presence," says an inmate. "I get conscious. Other women, too, have felt the same way but nobody dares to say anything to the owner.” The women say that the ‘donors', generally men, barge into their rooms unannounced, in the name of distributing sweets or fruits. When the women raise objection, the owners of the hostel scold them saying that the hostel runs on donors' mercy and they should not behave badly with them. “Cases of theft and sexual abuse are quite common in these hostels. Reason is obvious. These women can't identify the intruder. In fact, that is the reason nobody reports such incidents,” says A. David, an activist for the blind. S.K. Rungta, a senior advocate at Delhi High Court, who is blind himself and fights for visually impaired people, says that a few months ago, he got an anonymous letter in Braille from the inmates of a hostel, alleging sexual harassment. “I sent my female associates to the hostel, but nobody came forward. I became helpless. I couldn't take any action. These women face sexual harassment but are afraid to report it,” he says. The biggest problem, says Rungta, is that these blind women don't get support from their families, and most of them don't have visitors from home. “None of them have ever visited me in the hostel. They do not know what my hostel looks like,” says a woman from Uttar Pradesh about her two elder brothers and mother. Another woman from a village in Madhya Pradesh, who is very good at chess and quiz, breaks down while talking about the indifference of her family. “My father, mother, grandfather or brothers have not bothered to visit me in the last two years,” she says. When this reporter called her mother, she said: “We are generally busy, but we are confident she can manage on her own. God will help her.” But despite the lack of support from their families and inhospitable conditions, these women do not want to leave Delhi as they believe the capital is their last hope as it has the best educational facilities. Delhi has recently seen an influx of blind students from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. But lack of proper accomodation has send many students back, too. Activists have often knocked at the door of Delhi government for a hostel for blind women students. “The Delhi government has accepted our demand, but it has been more than a year and we are just waiting. After [the gang rape of a student in December], we have been reminding the officials about the vulnerability of blind women and the urgency of a hostel,” says Rungta. “Even at the university, there is a separate hostel for students from the northeast, but not for the disabled,” said Ramdas, a blind, BA final-year student at St Stephen's College. “There are about 1,500 seats available for disabled students but hardly 500 take admission because of the accommodation problem they have to face while studying at DU. I was lucky to get a hostel accommodation. Many of my friends, who didn't get or couldn't afford hostel accommodation, tried to take a flat on rent near the college. But nobody wants to take the responsibility for a blind person, especially a woman." Says Dr Kiran Walia, Delhi's social welfare minister: “The Union government should make it mandatory for states to have a hostel for people with disability. We, in Delhi, however, have been trying to get it done at the earliest. As far as existing unrecognised hostels are concerned, we can't take action against them. I hope in the new proposed law for people with disability, we will get these powers.” Until then they have no option but to fend for themselves. (Names have been changed to protect identity.) Article end. On 5/23/13, Sanchit Katiyar <katiyarsanchit...@gmail.com> wrote: > dear friends, > > please read this article, published in The Week magazine. > > http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?programId=1073754900&tabId=13&contentId=14059581&BV_ID=@@@ > > -- > With best regards, > Sanchit Katiyar. > > E-Mail: > katiyarsanchit...@gmail.com > > Skype ID: > sanchit.katiyar11 > > Mobile: > +919013816320. > > Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of > mobile phones / Tabs on: > http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in > > > Search for old postings at: > http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ > > To unsubscribe send a message to > accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in > 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 > > > Disclaimer: > 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the > person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; > > 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails > sent through this mailing list.. > -- Avinash Shahi MPhil Research Scholar Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi India Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in 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 Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
