The
Hindu: New Delhi: Monday, October 15, 2012.
Shobhu Ram, a
prominent activist from H.P., uses the Act to empower others of his ilk in his
State.
Shobhu Ram
can be mistaken for just another visually challenged person, who also works as
an announcer in the Himachal Pradesh Road Transport Corporation, but beneath
the veneer lies a strong fighter for the rights of the disabled in general and
for the rights of the visually challenged in particular. Mr. Ram is a prominent
activist who is using the Right to Information Act 2005 to empower everybody
like him in Himachal Pradesh.
He was part
of the delegation of activists who represented Himachal Pradesh at the two-day
7th annual convention of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that
culminated on Saturday.
By using the
RTI Act, Mr. Ram has exposed several loopholes and cases of corruption in the
implementation of government schemes for the visually challenged. For instance,
he filed RTI queries and brought out documents which showed that there are a
series of cases where people who were not visually challenged got the medical
certificate of being “blind” and subsequently got employment in the reserved
category of “visually challenged.”
Out of around
700 grade II and III jobs reserved for the visually challenged in Himachal
Pradesh, only 447 have been filled, revealed the State government response to
another RTI query by Mr. Ram. Interestingly when he accessed the employment
documents of the 447, it turned out that at least 300 did not have the
educational and medical records to support their visually challenged claim.
“I am going
to register a complaint with the State Disability Commission about this fraud
going on in the State,” says Mr. Ram, who formed the “Blind Persons
Association” in 1998 to fight for the rights of the visually challenged.
Mr. Ram
thinks that the Act can be used to ensure that the marginalised get their due
rights but says that even after seven years of the Act being in force, it has
not been properly utilised. The law also needs to be sensitive to the disabled
and visually challenged, he says.
“How are we
supposed to read the documents which the public authorities provide me as
answers to my RTI query?” he asks, suggesting that the visually challenged
should be provided with RTI answers and other documents in Braille script.
Asking the
CIC to take cognisance of their special needs, Mr. Ram argues: “The ideal
situation is that everybody has a computer and scanner with speaking software
but at present that is not the case.”
Asked about
the behaviour of the State agencies and public institutions in Himachal
Pradesh, Mr. Ram, who is the first journalism graduate of his State, says the
general pattern is that of “extreme indifference.” He puts his own example as a
case in point.
When he
applied for the post of the District Public Relations Officer in 2010, he
cleared the written stage. But he was rejected by the panel in the interview
round even though he was the only candidate for the post reserved for the
visually challenged.
Ajai
Srivastava, who is an activist working on disabled rights and whose
organisation “Umang Foundation” collaborates with “Blind Persons Association”
on a variety of issues, says: “You fight for your rights not with people but
with mindsets. The usual view plaguing the State departments is that a 100 per
cent blind [person] cannot work. So they somehow or other reject them in a
competition for a job.
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