Page 4 of 9

DIFFERENTLY ABLED, NOT DISABLED: CHANGING PARADIGMS

Dr. Sushma Batra
Reader, Department of Social Work
University of Delhi

Gone are the days when the disabled were treated with pity, ridicule, sympathy, rejection and hatred. This spectrum of attitudes of general public towards them made them suffer from low morale, guilt, loss of hope and faith. Above all, it resulted in loss of self-esteem and frustration. However, over a period of time not only have the attitudes undergone a change but the approach to dealing with disability has also undergone a transition from charity and welfare to provision of equal rights to the disabled. This has further been strengthened with the enactment of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. The need to create awareness caught momentum as early as in 1981 with the declaration of 1981 as International Year of the Disabled. This was followed by declaration of 1983-1993 as the International Decade for the Disabled by the United Nations. The emphasis on disability issues has further been strengthened by Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific region (ESCAP), which declared 1993-2003 as Decade for the Disabled in Asia and Pacific region and has further extended it by 10 years to 2013.

In keeping with the changing approaches, the name of the Ministry aiming to protect the rights of the disabled also underwent a change from Ministry of Social Welfare to Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

It is believed that in order to create a positive attitude and to mitigate the misunderstanding concerning disabling conditions, it is very pertinent to generate a platform to educate the public regarding the capabilities of the disabled.

India is a country predominantly dominated by a rural economy. Thus it becomes all the more important to educate the public living in remote areas about the capabilities of people living with disability.

The most important way to reach them is through the media. The power of media has been felt across all sections of society - rich or poor, urban or rural, young or old and male or female as well as educated and uneducated. Further, the messages sent by the visual media is believed to have greater impact as compared to newspapers, magazines etc. Television and Cinema are thus considered as the best medium to bring an attitudinal change towards the disabled in society. The unique feature of cinema is that a message can be conveyed with much ease even to uneducated people living at distant places.

With changing times there has been a definite change in the form of disability as projected on the screen. Initially in 1950s and 1960s the films used to evoke sympathy, pity for the people with disabilities and many a time disability was used as a medium to ask for alms by professional beggars. Most of the films produced in '80s and '90s have been issue-based. The producers and directors by and large have tried to understand the disability, the nature of problem faced and communication media used for communication and then they have come out with a story, which is near to reality. However, sometimes blindness/deafness was even used as a mechanism to get entangled in anti-social activities or to win the love of a person of the opposite sex. This has even been shown in films like "Badshah" and "Mohra" in the '90s.