Times
of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, 02 December 2015.
Twenty years
after a disability Act came into force, the city doesn't have a policy on
disability, and it also seems in the dark about the number of persons with
disability (PwD).
While
disability rights activists say 6-8% of Delhi's population has some form of
physical disability, data captured in the 2011 Census puts the PwD count at
only 2.35 lakh or 1.4% of the population.
And though
the Delhi government notified Persons with Disabilities Act 1995 in 2001, and
another disability Bill is pending in Parliament, there is still no state
policy on disability in the national capital.
TOI had
reported in July how successive city governments had done little on this issue
and even the present government hasn't formed its State Coordination Committee
(SCC) and State Executive Committee (SEC) that are to be reconstituted every
three years.
Worryingly,
policies are being made without any background data on disability at both the
state and central levels, as seven RTI queries to the Delhi Government and
central agencies have revealed.
Even today,
there is no comprehensive state policy on disability in Delhi. Earlier this
year, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's audit of the department of
social welfare the nodal office for implementation of the 1995 Act had
highlighted that the department did not conduct any independent door-to-door
surveys to create a comprehensive database of the disabled residing in Delhi,
and "it did not develop the state disability policy to address the issues
of persons with disability."
"I have
filed RTIs (copies of replies are with TOI) with Ministry of Statistics and
Programme Implementation and Ministry of Social Justice, Government of India.
The nodal ministry of Government of India that is responsible for policy
decision does not have any statistics to speak of," said Dr Satendra
Singh, disability rights activist. "Although Delhi is the national
capital, its state policy on disability is yet to be drafted; the SCC and SEC
have not been constituted even now, and the third issue is that a separate department
of disability which was promised by the AAP government has also not been taken
up," Singh added.
While RTI
replies in July 2015 revealed that the AAP government had initiated the process
of reconstitution of both SCC and SEC, sources said neither body has been
constituted four months on, and there are no records available on the advice
given by the government on formulation of policies, programmes, legislation and
projects related to disability. Sandeep Kumar, minister for social welfare,
could not be contacted.
Slamming the
political class and the bureaucracy, Javed Abidi, honorary director, National
Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, said, "While
credit goes to media and judiciary, the two organs that have not done justice
are the politicians and the bureaucrats. This is across the political spectrum.
A lot of nice things are said and forgotten. They don't look at the disabled as
a vote bank. We have got disability included in civil services, right to
education and planning, but still things are not hunky-dory, and on a scale of
10, I would give 2 for what we have achieved in the past 20 years."
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