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Rehabilitation of people with disability in the country today has acquired a significant place with a long history of over a century. In this field of special education India can now boast of more than 170 full-fledged institutions including 36 universities offering courses of various standards ranging from certificate, diploma to M Phil (Clinical Psychology) in different aspects of the activity. These institutions are duly recognized by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), the nodal agency for overseeing each and every aspect of rehabilitation. These include the B.Ed (Special Education) course as well as a Certificate course in Community-based Rehabilitation Education from the Madhya Pradesh Bhoj Open University and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) respectively.
The Council has further identified 16 different vocations in this profession ranging from speech therapists and audiologists, vocational counselors, social workers, rehabilitation engineers and technicians among others. RCI is planning setting up of a College of Rehabilitation Sciences to be later upgraded to a university. The Institute would be expected to impart advanced training, carry out research, standardization, profession development of rehabilitation disciplines, specially those unavailable in the country so far. "Rehabilitation science is a fast emerging area offering a lot of opportunities to people for pursuing a career in this challenging field", said Major HPS Ahluwalia, Chairman of RCI. Though the process of rehabilitation of the disabled in the country dates back to around the last two decades of the 19th century the progress was not quite encouraging. This prompted the Central government to take over the National Handicapped Council (NHC) which in turn was instrumental in establishing the RCI for overseeing each and every related aspects of the field in the country.
In order to ensure strict compliance to established norms and standards, RCI has started the process of accreditation and assessment of institutions and NGOs imparting rehabilitation education since 1999. Today India can boast of 3,000 rehabilitation schools imparting special education to the disabled. However, there is no doubt that RCI is faced with an uphill task in this direction as there are about 90 million disabled people in the country. On the other the situation is further grim as in about a decade from now 15-20 per cent of the country’s population would comprise senior citizens – an age group much more vulnerable to incidence of disability. An estimated 3,63,000 trained professionals including at least 44,000 multi-category teachers would be required for making rehabilitation a dream come true for such a huge disabled population. And in reality just about 23,000 trained professionals are registered with RCI and on an average about 4,500 professionals are trained by the 175 odd institutions and NGOs dealing with rehabilitation education.
National Programme was launched to orient all medical officers in Primary Health Centres (PHC’s) on various types of disabilities, such as locomotor speech and hearing, visual and mental retardation and to disseminate knowledge about prevention, early identification, intervention and rehabilitation for these disabilities. Besides it is aimed to sensitize medical officers about the disability issues such as social, legislation, human rights, gender issues and organization of such persons for asserting their roles, responsibilities and needs.
The programme was implemented in close collaboration with the State Health Secretary through 76 selected training centers to impart training to Master trainers/Doctors in 32 States. Up to March 2004, 634 Master Trainers and 18,657 Medical Officers have been trained, achieving around 80 per cent of the target.
The programme has resulted in large scale direct benefit of various services like prevention, early identification, referral, rehabilitation etc. to the rural populace, saving of large sums of money in the long run as Medical officers will be able to prevent or identify any disability problem at an early stage, decrease in the severity/extent of disability in millions of cases, wide and improved service network for the persons with disabilities even in the remotest corners of the country, awareness creation among the health workers which will percolate to the lowest level and social and economic empowerment of the persons with disabilities.
This programme was first of its kind as far as it covered all the Primary Health Centre of the country, catered exclusively to the needs of the rural population and having curriculum covering almost all aspects of disability coupled with field experience.
Section 13 of the RCI Act makes it mandatory for rehabilitation professionals to be registered with the Council as ‘no person can practice rehabilitation without a valid registration from RCI’. An important aspect of special education is that the Central Government reserves 3 per cent of the total seats in a general educational institution for disabled children. In order to make all schools in the country ‘friendly to people with disability’ at least one teacher would be required to be appointed by a school in the future. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan also provides for at least one Special Educator in a school. Further the Central Government has appointed State Commissioners for persons with disabilities in all the States and Union Territories. Implementation status of the People with Disabilities Act, 1995 is assessed on an annual basis. Corporate sector and business houses are being involved so as to create better employment opportunities for persons with disabilities, in the private sector. Besides, realizing the importance of involving NGOs, the Council has emphasized upon exploring means for engaging them in an optimum manner to achieve its goals. It is a timely step as out of about one million voluntary agencies active in different sectors just about 3,000 are engaged in the field of welfare of the disabled.
In an effort to reach out to all the corners of the nation RCI has seven Zonal committees, each having a nominated nodal agency to further its objectives. They are mandated with creating awareness about the various rehabilitation services, facilities, establish liaison with state governments etc. and as an interface for region-specific problems. RCI has standardized a one-year diploma course in Sign Language Interpretation, a first in the country which is being expanded to such institutions all over the country. Besides, the International Human Resources Development Centre of the Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Coimbatore (accredited by RCI) has brought out an Indian Sign language dictionary containing 1,600 words and 2,500 signs for daily usage by the disabled persons. It is proving to be a boon for the disabled.
*** Contributed by Abhijit Bora from Guwahati
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