Rights Of A Disabled Person

The Society we live in has so many types of people. We are all categorised under some category or groups of people. We are mostly categorised by religion or our status in society or by our physical and mental condition. Disabled person are one under that category they are people who are deprived from physically operating their body parts. They are people who are not only physically affected but also mentally affected. But when we look at them how they survive in the society with their disability it is rather pitiful. The society looks down at these people they either respect them or help them these people are struggling quite a lot in the society which we live. The society treats them in such a way that even they will feel that they don’t belong to that society and exclude themselves from the society. We live in a country where everyone should be treated equally regardless of what ever condition they are in or from. But as years pass by there is no change from the society and these people are still looked down.

And disability is something very common these days it is some fault in our internal body which affect our external body and also affects us mentally. And according to World Report on Disability over 15% that is 1billion people are affected with disability. We have types of disability: - Visible and Invisible. Visible one is the type where the person is affect by his external body parts like handicap, blind people, deaf people, dumb people etc. And invisible one is the type where they are affected internally like mentally retarded, or one with some disease.

We have this famous landmark case in India Deaf Employees Welfare Association vs Union of India. So in this case the welfare has filed a writ petition to central government seeking same allowance in transport department has given to other disabled government employees. And the Supreme Court gave order in favour of them stating that according to the Disability Act all types of disable person have to be treated equally before law.

And if we look at the education or job offer for all disable people it is quite complicated and hard. It is huge mistake of government from my perspective. Disable people are already the ones who are physically and mentally weak and they make the process for them to get proper education, college and job a complicated process which makes them work more. I felt the government should put disable people as their first priority and make sure all the disable people gets equal chance like the normal people and they are also treated equally. And despite getting a job there are cases when they are looked down. A sense of help and kindness should come to all the co-workers. And also they should treat equal to them and give them equal chance and opportunities to share their ideas and point of view.

And if we look from the law perspective in India there are many laws and regulations that are implied especially for the disable people. If we look at the Indian Constitution we have article 14, 15, 17, 21, 23, 25,31. These articles are basically for disabled people. And article 29 of the Indian constitution states that a person should not be deprived from his education in whatever condition he or she is in and this also implies to the disable.

We also have PWD (Persons with disabilities) 1995 which deals with family law, education law, labour law etc for disable people. Then we have Mental Health Act, 1987. These are the few acts enabled in our country mainly for protection and rights of disable people. Around early 1970s when the disable people were treated too badly many voices started to rise for the rights of disable person and that movement is called DRM (Disability Rights Movements). And this demand was active for more than a decade that the government came up with a solution and that is Person with Disabilities Act,1995. According to this act disable person was given 3% opportunity in government job. And after this act there was a quite a big change for disable people as they got themselves in some jobs and many received education after this act. Around 2006 UN and India agreed to sign an act called Rights of Person with disabilities but as time went up the demand for government jobs for disable people are increasing. Around2016 both the houses passed the rights of person with disabilities bill there are millions of people in our country waiting for that to become a law.

So here is another landmark case Government of India vs Ravi Prakash Gupta so this case is basically about the respondent Ravi Prakash have written civil service exam conducted by the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) and he was selected in merit list in visually impaired candidates. However he was not given appointment he approached the Central Administrative Tribunal and they refused his application. He then approached High court in this the state has filed an appeal to Supreme Court with an order that the job which the respondent is seeking is not for his condition i.e for person with disability. But the Supreme court set-side the order given by HC and gave the order in favour of the respondent.

So we can note that how the world uses and plays around with disable people they literally look down at them that is worst. They are human just like us with just few faults. Everyone is born with their own scars some are visible seen and some are not, that doesn’t mean that we are perfect and they are not everyone has their own ups and downs but we are scars to our beauty. We all shine in our own way and people with disability may be talented in something else. They are people like us who deserve equal opportunities like us. So let’s not look down at them and treat them equal to us. And love them and be kind to them and help them it is a biggest blessing for us. I hope very soon things will change and they will be treated the same way like normal human and they will gain their confidence back. In this way the world will become a better place for all of us with peace and harmony.

REFERENCES

ADOPTION - A BIG CHALLENGE IN INDIA

The word adoption is not looked in the right sphere in India. We tend to treat both the adoptee and the adopter in a different way. Adoption is basically a process where the child(adoptee) is taken complete care by the adopter as their own. But what state does the child grow up with his/her adopted parents? How does the adoptee face the society? And why the adoption rate is low in India? Let’s have a comparative study as to why adoption rate is decreasing in India? According to the recent survey, India is the second most populated country in the world with 1,405,993,616 as of June13,2022 by the latest UN data. And we have more than millions of children in our country. And recent survey states that there are 3,559 children were placed for adoption in India with families living in India and abroad(2020-2021survey). According to the survey there are 28,000 registered parents for adopting but every year hardly 2200 kids are being adopted what about the remaining children? There are thousands of children left for adoption. Many are in Child Care Institution (CCI), many in small-small orphanages etc. As of 2020,2,27,518 children were living in CCI. We have CARA (Central Adoption Resources Authority) this is developed and managed under the Government of India.So, this authority takes care of all the adoption process in India and in abroad. But are they well connected with all the adoption agency and orphanage home in India?

Mostly single parents tend to adopt children and they mostly prefer adopting kids at smaller age most likely less than 5. The other age groups children are hardly adopted. From my view I felt that there is a mistake both in government and society. Usually in India for adoption they register in CARA for the adoption. Some succeed in it and find a perfect child for them but in some cases it is not. There are cases where even after registration they don’t get any news regarding adoption and it gets hard to contact them. Since they drag it for a long time many loses interest and they lose all hopes for adoption. So here it is the government mistake they should have assigned proper staff and kept track of all registration and should have made themselves available for all the adopters need. And with all this research we can observe that they don’t have proper connection with all the adoption agency or orphanages across the country. So, from my perspective these mistakes by the government are few of the reasons as to why there is decrease in adoption rate over the years in our country. And from society view the people themselves does not have a good thought about adoption. This is one of the main reasons which affects a child mentally in his/her growth. As the adoptees face the world many might look down at them especially at school, they might get teased or bullied which will make the growing child to isolate themselves from the world and they will never expose themselves to anyone. This will affect them mentally and emotionally. From my perspective the society must not treat the adoptees or the adopters any differently from others. They should treat them equally and get along with them so that the adoptees won’t feel left out. These are small thing that will help the child’s mental growth.

In India we have lots of laws and acts that is about adoption and the process and procedure of it . We have the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (HAMA), 1956.So this act basically deals with Hindus in adoption process. This act talks about all the procedure and legal ways for adoption. We have the Juvenile Justice Act,2015. This was passed by the government for the care and protection of children. We would have heard a lot about gang rape, kidnapping, human trafficking around 2011-2019. There were so many cases in India and many victims were kids. Small children were being kidnapped small girl child were raped, so to stop all this evil act the government came up with an act especially for the protection of kids and children that is Juvenile Justice. Around July 2018 there was almost 630adoption pending cases so there was a new amendment that the district court has to deal with all adoption cases and not the civil court (The Juvenile Justice(Care and Protection for Children) Amendment Act,2021).So this is the new step the government has taken to increase the adoption rate. Since in our country adoption procedure and process will be depending on the adopter’s religion and our country is known for secularism. We have laws and procedure for Hindus but when it comes to Muslims, they lack Uniform Civil Code on adoption. So, if the governments improvise the law many childless parents can get a child easily through adoption.

We have recent case the Supreme court issued a notice to the Centre on petition filed by the NGO. According to this case every year there is hardly 4000 adoption in our country but there are thousands of children in orphanages and thousands of children who are begging in road, many are thrown away by their parents because of family issues approximately there must be 3 crore orphan children in our country but the adoption rate is too less. There are several families who are ready for adoption. The SC also gave some suggestion to assign few trained staff to handle this issue and to decrease the compliancy of adoption. And to see the adoption rate in developed countries like America around 140,000children are adopted by the American families each year. Over 400,000 children are there in foster care. The rate of adoption is comparatively higher than in India. We have the ‘Child welfare Information gateway’ they are an adoption agency we also have a website assigned by the government AdoptUSKids.org this site shares details about the kids waiting for adoption and what type of adopter they need. We can see how organized and systematic the adoption process is in US compared to India.

We have famous landmark case Shabnam Hashmivs Union of India, AIR 2014 SC. So this case basically deals with Muslim women who want to adopt but as we all know Muslims, Christians and Parsi don’t have any adoption act so they follow Guardians and Wards Act, 1980. So in this case she adopted a small girl and filed a petition stating a person with any religion can adopt since there is no act for Muslim adoption three judges of Supreme Court took this case under Juvenile Justice act, 2000 and also CARA. And according to Supreme Court the JJ Act doesn’t talk in specific about adoption but it talks about uniform civil code. But this is a fundamental right so they said adoption can be done by any person in any religion.

I like to conclude by stating ‘The world may not change if you adopt a child, but for that child their world will change’. Every child has a right to live their life, have a right to have a family. The adoptees should be loved they deserve to be loved they have a voice to speak out they should not isolate themselves. They have a purpose and at last they deserve happiness and family love. The Society should change their point of view about Adoption and accept them and treat them equally. And the government should take more measures to increase the adoption rate so all the single families might get a child and a single child can also get a beautiful family.

REFERENCES

SHARON MABEL JOY

Rights Of A Disabled Person

ADOPTION - A BIG CHALLENGE IN INDIA

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