Media ignores plight of disabled

Lal Advani, president, Indian association for special education and rehabilitation, who is himself visually impaired, stressed that more than highlighting their disability, the focus should be on what a disabled person has achieved. “How many people know that President Franklin Roosevelt, Julius Caesar, Einstein and Beethoven were disabled in different ways,” he asked. “We must talk about their achievements. Disability is only incidental. Polio could not deter Jaipal Reddy’s career as a successful politician nor did visual impairment Ravindra Jain’s music.”

Stating that the non-governmental organisations working in the disability sector are more to be blamed for the media’s apathetic attitude, Javed Abidi, executive director of the national centre for promotion of employment for disabled people said, “These organisations approach the media only when they are organising a function, where they can show the disabled can paint or dance. They are more involved in service delivery and have projected disability as a charity issue, rather than as rights issue.” Stressing that the disability must be looked upon from the development perspective, Abidi pointed out that the country’s progress would not be complete, if its 60 million disabled citizens are not taken care of. Programmes, whether government or non-government, focussing on disability have been few and their implementation very tardy. The extent to which this segment has been ignored can be gauged from the fact that until 1995 there was no law in India to protect the rights of the disabled, he underlined.

Highlighting the paucity of television programmes for the handicapped, Onkarnath Sharma, general secretary, all India federation of the deaf said, “ The weekly news magazine for the hearing impaired on Doordarshan is of hardly any use. Aren’t we entitled to get spot stories? They don’t realise the deaf can read newspapers and the weekly magazine is a stale piece.”Agreeing that enough has not been done to project the problems of the disabled, a senior official with Doordarshan, Ananya Banerjee said, “It is more because of economics than anything else. Corporate houses rarely come forward to sponsor such programmes. Previously, before the entry of the private satellite channels, the national broadcaster could afford to do more human interest stories. Today, concerns for economic viability weigh more.”

Referring to the serial `Shanti’ in which a mentally disabled Ramesh, is shown to have got married and leading a normal family life, Dr Joyshree, a practicising psychiatrist observed, “Such depictions raises the expectations of the parents, whose children have this disability. They want the doctors to reassure them that even their children too can lead happy married lives. We find it difficult to explain the reality to them.”Psychologist Ali Bachur, who has made two documentaries on the disabled said, “The characters they show on TV bear no resemblance to what the physically or the mentally disabled actually are. This shows the film-makers lack an understanding of the subject.”