She Turns Her Disability Into An Advantage For The Handicapped

That determination culminated in The Association of People with Disability, Bangalore's first and oldest centre for people with locomotor disabilities. Started by Hema and a few friends inside a garage in 1959, it has now developed into a campus complete with the Shraddhanjali Integrated School, a physiotherapy unit, a facility where aids and appliances for the disabled are fabricated, and an Industrial Training Institute. From the initial few thousand Hema managed to scrape up almost 40 years ago, the association's budget has swelled to Rs 1.2 crore this year. A minuscule 4 per cent of this amount comes from the government; the rest is raised through donations and overseas agencies which support specific projects for the disabled.

Says Hema, who's risen from being a founder-member of the association to its president now: "This is my school, this is my education. If you look at the needs (of the disabled), you find they're enormous and that only a beginning has been made. We can go on for the next 40 years based on the needs of the disabled." She ought to know, afflicted by polio at an age when girls would count beyond a 100 on a skipping rope. Initially confined to a wheelchair, Hema now moves around the two-acre campus on a battery-operated scooter designed for the disabled.

At 60, Hema's life is still one of challenges. The first challenge her team faced was how to offer help to the disabled: set up a medical centre, start a school, commence vocational courses, or a full-fledged rehabilitation centre. When the team finally decided on an integrated school with a physiotherapy centre alongside, funds posed a problem. So the team had to start the school in a garage with 10 children on its rolls. Today that number has risen to 200 at the school and a strength of 88 at the institute.

As donations began trickling in and the association worked on new projects, there came a major hurdle: finding the right kind of people to work at the centre. That, says Hema, is crucial, for the attitude of people towards issues concerning the handicapped span from total sympathy to gross indifference and insensitivity. "The disabled cannot have concessions and sympathy all the time, but they do need people who understand their problems," she says.

Then, with a steady rise in the number of students at the integrated school, the association was confronted with another problem: a sizeable number of disabled children from slums in the city could not commute from home to the school. So they took the school to the slums with the Urban Slum Outreach programme, an initiative that has benefited thousands of underprivileged disabled children. This year, 850 children from nine slums in Bangalore are being taught how to read, write and perhaps find avenues of employment. A similar programme has been launched for the disabled in 50 villages in Kolar district.

Besides, the Industrial Training Institute has been training the disabled in electronics, draftsmanship, and trades of fitters, welders and gardeners. Over the years, Hema says she's seen a tremendous change in the attitude of people towards the disabled. "People are willing to be supportive and are sensitive to these issues. But at times, we hope things could happen much faster." A change, say, like the manufacture of perfectly designed aids and appliances for the disabled. "Nobody here makes a wheel-chair designed perfectly for the disabled. They develop snags within a couple of months," she says ruefully.

Hema's next task is to educate the handicapped about their rights and privileges which have been listed in the new legislation for the disabled. A national award in the 1980s and one from the Karnataka government in recent years are not the kind of recognition Hema craves for. Perhaps, the mere satisfaction of spending several decades for the disabled would suffice for her. If you wish to know more, call: (080) 5470390, 5475165.