The legal status of the disabled persons in India has historically been rather in question. The existence of a fairly large disabled population has always been known though most people have always been uncomfortable with acknowledging this. The progress towards full participation and active citizenship of the disabled population of the country has been hampered by a number of factors over the years, not the least of which is the patent paternalistic culture and society in which we live where the rights of any one are routinely infringed by power structures and hierarchies that have been in place since India exists. In a situation then where rights of the individual and independent living constitutes a break with the broader cultural and social realities, the struggle of disabled people to have their own “rights” accepted into daily life has been an uphill one. When I say this I mean, that even well meaning members of society were, and for the most part still are, locked into the ‘charity’ paradigm of development.

Society at large has after all its own conscience and at the end of the day the most “needy” looking disabled persons have always been the ones to get the most sympathy and the most attention from the public. The Disabled community of India, though it is not necessarily a physical community with the hallmarks and essentials of any other community is nevertheless a community of sorts and as such has a certain cohesion as is expected of any other community. People who are privileged through education, wealth, rank, and other social qualifiers have been the ones, who on the cutting edge of the community, as in any community, lead the way for change and reform. Despite their efforts the issues of the community have not changed much and will likely for the immediate future remain the same as they have been in the past, particularly for the vast majority of the rural disabled populations.

Till the early nineties when the Govt and disabled people combined to come up with a PWD ACT the idea of disabled people and rights had not caught on at all. It is interesting to note that though the Act has been in force for 14 years the actual paradigm shift and the approach towards a rights based model has still not permeated the country, indeed many organisations are still stuck in a charity mode due to various reasons. The PWD Act reflects the sympathy towards all the “needy looking’ disabled people and so much was said by the ones who were not properly addressed in this Act that a new Act of Parliament called the National Trust Act was passed. The function of this Act was to suitably address the issues of these specific disabilities and it was an extremely good move.

It is tragic however that the very nature of deafness and the invisibility of the deaf individual is the reason for the neglect of the deaf in society. A deaf person who has had to survive in a ‘hearing world’ has had to hone his skills of observation and perception to a fine pitch in order to carry on the most basic of conversations in a mixture of badly articulated half words and gestures and pantomime. This in itself is so amazing, intriguing and obviously wonderful that the deaf get a false reputation of being totally clued in and intelligible. Thus the guilt feeling of the general populace of being able to talk while deaf people languish in silence is extinguished and one hears continually of the wonderful communication skills of the deaf. The laws framed for the disabled population in India and the ones that have been framed for the general public completely neglect the issues that face deaf people. The People With Disabilities Act as it is generally known has 4 mentions of hearing impaired persons. The first in the list of disabilities covered, second in the definition of hearing impairment, the third in the name of the national institute, and the fourth in the section dealing with reduced syllabus for disabled people and issuing a concession of a single language for the hearing impaired student.

Throughout the Act there is no mention at any time under any section of fundamental provisions for the deaf such as interpreters the use of sign language, captioning and subtitling on TV, Lip speakers and communication facilitators and so on which are fundamental to a disability whose first and last problem is communication with the society at large. A completely insensitive administration and a myopic national institute have contributed to this lacuna, which has as yet not been perceived to be a lacuna but rather, pursuing of Govt policy of suppression of sign language and promotion of an oral model of education for the deaf. This has extended to the National Policy on Disability where no mention has been made about interpreters and access for deaf people to govt services.

The myopia which prevailed then, has been, thankfully, now shown up as such by the revelations in the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disability, where the issue of language and communication has been dealt with in the definitions of language where sign language has been mentioned to do away with the discussion on ‘whether’ it is a language and a valid means of communication with the deaf. Other central issues of access, linguistic freedom, deaf culture and more have also received attention and been thus validated.

The decision of the Delhi Tis Hazari courts to create a panel of interpreters is unprecedented and a wonderful step forward. the deaf will soon be able to access the justice system.