Ability Forum

[quadhari82]

Dear members,

         I am not sure how I want to put my thoughts into words, as I feel if this forum has to succeed we need to be more vociferous. The internet medium, although growing rapidly, is still  disorganized, & I would be highly surprised even if 1% of the net users know or care about sites that discuss the problems of physically or mentally challenged. I do not blame them, for I put my 25 year old healthy self & I would probably use the net to access a pornographic site. So if we don’t have a huge mass base, then how can this society succeed.

          However I do agree there can be no better platform to raise our voices than the net as we are geographically dispersed & assuming that we are introverted, tired, bored & angry, we tend not to
socialize. But again we should remind ourselves that we are the lucky few of our kind to have a PC & a net connection. During my stay at the rehabilitation centre of CMC some 4 years back, a major portion of the physically challenged people were well cleaners, daily wage laborers &  people from the lower strata of society. Surely they and millions of others even from middle class do not have the luxury of a PC & a net connection. So again I come back to the question. How to make this forum succeed. How to make this country take us seriously.

          From what I gather, I have seen some of the organizers of this forum in both print & electronic media. I particularly remember Ms. Shivani Gupta on NDTV on the 3rd of December.

DECEMBER 3RD  - WORLD DISABILITY DAY – probably the only day these high profile news channels & the national dailies are generous enough to devote 10 minutes of their air time & a quarter page of their newsprint respectively.  There after, they revert back to reporting the same old crappy news 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.

          This would hardly serve to make our plight heard to the nation & more importantly to our parliamentarians & legislators. We need the mass media to succeed in our endeavors. If we can convince these 24 hr news channels to give us half an hour of their airtime per week & an editorial space per week in one of the leading dailies ( & if possible regional dailies), our voice will surely be heard. However this world is ruled by money & I am highly doubtful if either of these mediums
would give us what we want for free. To convince them, we need to convince the political class to provide some economic concessions to these mediums for helping us out.

           Since most of the politicians are self-serving & greedy, it would be hard to open their eyes & ears ( leave their hearts, you wont find them) to our cause. To achieve that, we have to come out in the physical world & stage a dharna atleast twice a month.

          I know what you are thinking now. You think I am mad & I wont deny it. We are tired souls, bored souls. We are not mentally prepared to take this path due to the various physical & mental obstacles. Even as I write I am not sure whether I myself am ready, I am thinking of the additional burden I would be forcing on my parents. But I can surely tell you that there is no other way we will be heard.

           This forum & all the other forums related to disabilities should unite under one umbrella to build a base strong enough to bring together all the challenged souls in the physical world so that when we stage a dharna, the numbers should be such that it should overwhelm the highest echelons of power & force them to take us seriously.

Thanking you for your patience.

Yours truly,

Harish

Dear members,

         I am not sure how I want to put my thoughts into words, as I feel if this forum has to succeed we need to be more vociferous. The internet medium, although growing rapidly, is still  disorganized, & I would be highly surprised even if 1% of the net users know or care about sites that discuss the problems of physically or mentally challenged. I do not blame them, for I put my 25 year old healthy self & I would probably use the net to access a pornographic site. So if we don’t have a huge mass base, then how can this society succeed.

          However I do agree there can be no better platform to raise our voices than the net as we are geographically dispersed & assuming that we are introverted, tired, bored & angry, we tend not to
socialize. But again we should remind ourselves that we are the lucky few of our kind to have a PC & a net connection. During my stay at the rehabilitation centre of CMC some 4 years back, a major portion of the physically challenged people were well cleaners, daily wage laborers &  people from the lower strata of society. Surely they and millions of others even from middle class do not have the luxury of a PC & a net connection. So again I come back to the question. How to make this forum succeed. How to make this country take us seriously.

          From what I gather, I have seen some of the organizers of this forum in both print & electronic media. I particularly remember Ms. Shivani Gupta on NDTV on the 3rd of December.

DECEMBER 3RD  - WORLD DISABILITY DAY – probably the only day these high profile news channels & the national dailies are generous enough to devote 10 minutes of their air time & a quarter page of their newsprint respectively.  There after, they revert back to reporting the same old crappy news 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.

          This would hardly serve to make our plight heard to the nation & more importantly to our parliamentarians & legislators. We need the mass media to succeed in our endeavors. If we can convince these 24 hr news channels to give us half an hour of their airtime per week & an editorial space per week in one of the leading dailies ( & if possible regional dailies), our voice will surely be heard. However this world is ruled by money & I am highly doubtful if either of these mediums
would give us what we want for free. To convince them, we need to convince the political class to provide some economic concessions to these mediums for helping us out.

           Since most of the politicians are self-serving & greedy, it would be hard to open their eyes & ears ( leave their hearts, you wont find them) to our cause. To achieve that, we have to come out in the physical world & stage a dharna atleast twice a month.

          I know what you are thinking now. You think I am mad & I wont deny it. We are tired souls, bored souls. We are not mentally prepared to take this path due to the various physical & mental obstacles. Even as I write I am not sure whether I myself am ready, I am thinking of the additional burden I would be forcing on my parents. But I can surely tell you that there is no other way we will be heard.

           This forum & all the other forums related to disabilities should unite under one umbrella to build a base strong enough to bring together all the challenged souls in the physical world so that when we stage a dharna, the numbers should be such that it should overwhelm the highest echelons of power & force them to take us seriously.

Thanking you for your patience.

Yours truly,

Harish

[Adverts]

[Sachin]

Hello Harish,

Let me start by saying welcome, being one of the moderators of this forum it gives me great pleasure to see that our forum has now become the thinking grounds for many.

Coming to your discussion, I am a firm believer in the powers of this revolutionary medium, and can assure you that it will surpass any other medium (print or television) in the very near future, globally it has already started to happen, and in India if we look closely the rate at which we have adopted technology (be it IT or Telecom) has been extraordinary and surprising to many. By saying this I am not undermining the potentials that exist in both print and television and its mass reach, but at the same time we have to look at the future and start preparing for it now. That’s where our predecessors have lacked and we need to make up for it. Did we ever imagine when mobile phones were first introduced, that they will become such a rage, that most of us, be from any strata of society will own one. With the changing dynamics of our economy, owning a computer and an internet connection will be a thing of the past soon. In this light, it is important to ask ourselves, how are we going to use these mediums? And how would these mediums be controlled? What will be the user’s role?

Coming back to your discussion, I believe making the voices heard is very important, and what best than print or television which has a higher recall value today (like you instantly remember Shivani from that NDTV program). And since print and television coverage also works on similar economics as films and radio does, which is popular demands and advertisement etc, having visibility is going to be expensive. You rightly said, that we should have some space (in terms of minutes of programming, or editorial print space) dedicated to this cause and reasonably priced (and I don’t say free as that makes them un-interested). I suggest (contrary to staging dharna’s) that we start an online petition which aims at putting this point across, to both the media houses and the political class, and I can clearly see that you may not like this idea as participation is again going to be limited (since not all use the internet) but I am sure that the support will mixed (from both disabled and non disabled) and higher. In case you don’t mind starting such a petition, here is the link where you can start; http://www.petitiononline.com/create_petition.html , the petition can then be posted on this forum and many other related forums to pledge support, this will also help in getting them all together.

Also in my opinion, there is something fundamentally wrong in the way disability has been looked at in our country (and many others). It has usually been considered an issue to sympathise with, something that calls for charity and is treated by many as a centre point for fund raising issues, so on and so forth. I don’t deny that there are many serious organisations and individuals who have worked hard for the betterment of persons with disability, but only a handful have tried changing perceptions and views instead of going along with them and adding to the confusion. What persons with disability need today is not charity, sympathy or for that matter even concession, they need the society to look beyond disabilities and realise the true ability that each individual has. At the same time, I must say (and I know many of you may disagree) that persons with disability should also start rejecting the sympathetic and charitable attitude of the society which has been a dependent and backward approach towards the issue. I may not be an expert, but with whatever observations and experiences I have had, I have seen many disabled individuals who may have tremendous potential but usually lack the will which forces them to avoid or ignore opportunities, simply because these opportunities involve hard work or struggle (with no exception of disabled or non disabled), instead they prefer opportunities that are easy to come by (through reservations), secure and involve minimum effort.

I think I went overboard with my thoughts, anyways the bottom line of the above was, that we need a paradigm shift… a shift in the way we think and a shift in the way we work around this issue. I remember a quote (that I am very fond of) by Mahatma Gandhi, he said “you must be the change you wish to see in the society” and I guess he was so right.

---

Also to take this discussion forward, I will like to know views of all members on what do they think should be our No 1 priority, when it comes to disability issues.. and how should it be addressed?

---

Regards,
Sachin Verma

Hello Harish,

Let me start by saying welcome, being one of the moderators of this forum it gives me great pleasure to see that our forum has now become the thinking grounds for many.

Coming to your discussion, I am a firm believer in the powers of this revolutionary medium, and can assure you that it will surpass any other medium (print or television) in the very near future, globally it has already started to happen, and in India if we look closely the rate at which we have adopted technology (be it IT or Telecom) has been extraordinary and surprising to many. By saying this I am not undermining the potentials that exist in both print and television and its mass reach, but at the same time we have to look at the future and start preparing for it now. That’s where our predecessors have lacked and we need to make up for it. Did we ever imagine when mobile phones were first introduced, that they will become such a rage, that most of us, be from any strata of society will own one. With the changing dynamics of our economy, owning a computer and an internet connection will be a thing of the past soon. In this light, it is important to ask ourselves, how are we going to use these mediums? And how would these mediums be controlled? What will be the user’s role?

Coming back to your discussion, I believe making the voices heard is very important, and what best than print or television which has a higher recall value today (like you instantly remember Shivani from that NDTV program). And since print and television coverage also works on similar economics as films and radio does, which is popular demands and advertisement etc, having visibility is going to be expensive. You rightly said, that we should have some space (in terms of minutes of programming, or editorial print space) dedicated to this cause and reasonably priced (and I don’t say free as that makes them un-interested). I suggest (contrary to staging dharna’s) that we start an online petition which aims at putting this point across, to both the media houses and the political class, and I can clearly see that you may not like this idea as participation is again going to be limited (since not all use the internet) but I am sure that the support will mixed (from both disabled and non disabled) and higher. In case you don’t mind starting such a petition, here is the link where you can start; http://www.petitiononline.com/create_petition.html , the petition can then be posted on this forum and many other related forums to pledge support, this will also help in getting them all together.

Also in my opinion, there is something fundamentally wrong in the way disability has been looked at in our country (and many others). It has usually been considered an issue to sympathise with, something that calls for charity and is treated by many as a centre point for fund raising issues, so on and so forth. I don’t deny that there are many serious organisations and individuals who have worked hard for the betterment of persons with disability, but only a handful have tried changing perceptions and views instead of going along with them and adding to the confusion. What persons with disability need today is not charity, sympathy or for that matter even concession, they need the society to look beyond disabilities and realise the true ability that each individual has. At the same time, I must say (and I know many of you may disagree) that persons with disability should also start rejecting the sympathetic and charitable attitude of the society which has been a dependent and backward approach towards the issue. I may not be an expert, but with whatever observations and experiences I have had, I have seen many disabled individuals who may have tremendous potential but usually lack the will which forces them to avoid or ignore opportunities, simply because these opportunities involve hard work or struggle (with no exception of disabled or non disabled), instead they prefer opportunities that are easy to come by (through reservations), secure and involve minimum effort.

I think I went overboard with my thoughts, anyways the bottom line of the above was, that we need a paradigm shift… a shift in the way we think and a shift in the way we work around this issue. I remember a quote (that I am very fond of) by Mahatma Gandhi, he said “you must be the change you wish to see in the society” and I guess he was so right.

---

Also to take this discussion forward, I will like to know views of all members on what do they think should be our No 1 priority, when it comes to disability issues.. and how should it be addressed?

---

Regards,
Sachin Verma

[mylaibalki]

Hi,

I read your posting regarding doing dharnas to draw attention to our needs. I think you are partially right. But resorting to dharnas will not succeed because the politicians very well know that we are not a huge votebank and will never pay serious attention to our problems. I have read and heard from many of my friends abroad that there the public places are disabled friendly. So my suggestion although may sound very extreme to the patriotic people of this country is that we must all emigrate to some western advanced country, if possible at the earliest, so that we may also enjoy the minimum needs of us the disabled.

posted by a frustrated disabled person

Hi,

I read your posting regarding doing dharnas to draw attention to our needs. I think you are partially right. But resorting to dharnas will not succeed because the politicians very well know that we are not a huge votebank and will never pay serious attention to our problems. I have read and heard from many of my friends abroad that there the public places are disabled friendly. So my suggestion although may sound very extreme to the patriotic people of this country is that we must all emigrate to some western advanced country, if possible at the earliest, so that we may also enjoy the minimum needs of us the disabled.

posted by a frustrated disabled person

[Sachin]

Hi Mylaibalki,

Well, since you have already accepted that many of us (patriotic) selves may not agree to the idea of immigrating to a western country because they are more accessible, I just wanted to add something here.. and please dont feel offended, but in my opinion running away from reality will not change it, changing it will !!

So my friend, transform the build up of energy inside you (that you call frustration) and chanelise it into something that can help change things for better, I know I sound very cliche and maybe also a bit rude, but believe me.. each one of us has a potential unknown sometimes to our own self, and that potential does not discriminate on race, colour, ability, religion or anything for that matter.

All we need to do is find whats our potential ..

Regards,

Sachin

Hi Mylaibalki,

Well, since you have already accepted that many of us (patriotic) selves may not agree to the idea of immigrating to a western country because they are more accessible, I just wanted to add something here.. and please dont feel offended, but in my opinion running away from reality will not change it, changing it will !!

So my friend, transform the build up of energy inside you (that you call frustration) and chanelise it into something that can help change things for better, I know I sound very cliche and maybe also a bit rude, but believe me.. each one of us has a potential unknown sometimes to our own self, and that potential does not discriminate on race, colour, ability, religion or anything for that matter.

All we need to do is find whats our potential ..

Regards,

Sachin