A section
of stutters agrees being branded as disabled as they are able to benefit from
it, where as other section do not agree as they do not feel good to get
recognized themselves as Disabled.
I am writing this article to support stammering
as disability.Initially I was against to be called as “Disabled.” Then I thought in wider
perspective. I realized that it is needed to declare stammering as disability.We can give a speech on positive thinking ,body language or have an positive idea about our stammering .But when we talk about all these things, we actually talk about a few PWS connected to TISA like SHGs and who are mild stutters.There may not be a recognizable connection between success and stammering but its only true in case of mild stuttering.Let us think in broader perspective. We
are 700-800 PWS, if we combine both TISA and Yahoo PWS group, In which hardly
200 PWS are active. In an estimation about 1 Crore stutters are there in India. If we compare this number to our active
members than its much high. We should take any decision taking care of
majority. The PWS who are not attached to any SHG movement living a mysterious
life thinking that one day someone will come to hold their finger .They are not
so internet friendly to know about our group. If we talk about awareness than
it will take long-long time to do that with our limited resources. In this time
period lakhs of our stutter friends will die in darkness. Making one life
better is making whole humanity better.This attempt is not for reservations
but it is to demand some legislation to stop discrimination in different level.
We should raise our voice infront of government to make some legislation and
protocol to stop discrimination.
A person who has polio in his one leg has given reservation by government .Because He is not able to apply in Army like jobs or in those jobs in which it needs running or walking.If government would not give them reservation then he would be left behind from main stream and it will be violation of human rights too.Even He can do better in jobs like IT ,call center or banks etc still they get reservation.If we consider case of stutters, same conditions are applied to us too..even we get torcherd in so many ways by society that a person with disability other than stuttering wouldn't.Our case is serious than that of the person affected by polio.
Before going to further in this article let us have a look on definition of Disability.
A person who has polio in his one leg has given reservation by government .Because He is not able to apply in Army like jobs or in those jobs in which it needs running or walking.If government would not give them reservation then he would be left behind from main stream and it will be violation of human rights too.Even He can do better in jobs like IT ,call center or banks etc still they get reservation.If we consider case of stutters, same conditions are applied to us too..even we get torcherd in so many ways by society that a person with disability other than stuttering wouldn't.Our case is serious than that of the person affected by polio.
Before going to further in this article let us have a look on definition of Disability.
According to Wikipedia.
“
Disability
is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and
participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or
structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an
individual in executing a task or action; while a participation
restriction is
a problem experienced by an individual
in involvement in life situations. Thus, disability is a complex phenomenon,
reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of
the society in which he or she lives. Mental disorders (also known as psychiatric or psychosocial
disability) and various types of chronic disease may also qualify as disabilities.”
I If we consider above definition
that stammering can be assumed as Disability.
1)The Americans with
Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act
of 1990 (ADA) prohibits employment discrimination against qualified individuals
with disabilities. ADA defines three types of an "individual with a
disability" (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Technical Assistance
Manual, page II- 3)
- a physical or mental impairment that
substantially limits one or more major life activities. Speaking is one such
major life activity. Others include seeing and hearing.
- a record of such an impairment. This applies
more to individuals with a history of mental illness.
- is regarded as having such an impairment. This protects people who are not substantially limited in a major life activity but are perceived to have such a limitation. For example, you may be capable of communicating, but your employer thinks that you can't communicate.
some other Acts in world that consider stuttering as Disability.
Great Britain's Equality Act 2010,
Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992 etc.
Some views of
the people are written below on which I replied.
View 1: It
depends on individuals Perception or opinion
either they consider it as
disability or not.
Reply : Let us talks about facts
not about opinions.
2+2= 3,4 or 5 are opinions but
2+2= 4 is a fact .
Any physical or mental
impairment or disorder that is INCURABLE and affects our daily routine work
partially or completely is considered as disability.We can mention percentage
of disability but technically and
logically stammering is disability.
View 2: I dont think declaring it a disability will change the
opinion of the society in any way.Even
after declaration of stammering as disability a PWS will be discriminated.
Reply : How my friend ? Now a
days a company can fire a stammerer giving an excuse that he/she was not
capable of doing the given task.we can not even appeal against it.After
declaring it as disability government will have to make a legislation about
it.After that A PWS can appeal against these type of cases.Although some
companies have their own policy to take care of discrimination cases but they
are not bound to that and most of these policies are only in black and white.
View 3:You said that In so many cases society rejected a stutter as
marriage material due his/her stammer. So a girl will marry
you if you get a disability status?
Reply : look
below an opinion poll among stutter attached with well known non-profit
organisation The India stammering association (TISA). 71.8% stutters consider
stammering as Disability.
Again look another opinion poll non-stutters.62.32 %
normal public ALREADY consider stammering as disability.When a girl marry to a
stutter she already knoe that stammering could not be cured.She know that whom
she is going to marry will stammer throughout his life and vise-versa.
Conclusion is this people already know that stammering is
non-curable so there will be no recognizable effect of declaring stammering as
disability.
View 4: All
u can get from all this is a govt job to be frank,private companies still
wouldn’t hire you or promote you,people will still at laugh.I will favour
spreading awareness and helping PWS like TISA.
Reply: Let me clear ;
1)
All this is neither for
personal benefit nor for Reservation.This all to avoid didcrimination . It will
be our stand in front of government to avoid discrimination.after that it will
be up to government how it made legislation about it.If a PWS get a job then it
will put him in safe side only.Still awareness will be important because
private companies still wouldn’t hire stutters.
2)
We can aware
stutters to have better attitude towards problem.We are not living in ideal
world.We can’t let ourselves on the conscience of others.We can aware people
that a PWS can do better even with his/stutter but it may help only at the
time of hiring.Can you tell me how awareness will help a stutter at the time
when a company will fire or wouldn’t promote him due to his stutter???.At that time only
legislature will work.there are two things one is for stutters to have better
attitude about problem and other to avoid discrimination.TISA helps a PWS to have better attitude about the
problem but we still need a tool to avoid discrimination.
View 5: it is very difficult to predict whether a person stutters
really or is faking it.
Reply : I
think its very easy I have to points to support my statement.
1)Government have to mandate all schools and
colleges and schools from nursery to post graduate level that whenever
any stutter would leave school or college they have to provide him/her a
certificate as a proof about his/her stuttering.Through out his/her studied a
stutter will get atleast 3-4 proofs regarding stuttering.Suppose a
person want to fake to get benefit of stutters than he/she would have to
go to all schools and colleges to get fake proofs,and you know its not possible
at all.Even if someone does that certificates can be easly identified because
they wouldn’t look like 20 years old.
2)There can be very few people who can mimic stuttering that an stutter failed
to recognize.If someone is so good in mimicry than he/she would go to
bolywood to become an actor or mimic :-) To recognize genuine stutters companies
could hire stutters as HR professionals.One other benefit is this it
might increase demand of stutters in industry(what could be better than this).
3)In SC/ST/OBC government provide reservation to all candidates .Are all
candidates poor or not in
mainstream???.To benefit some deserving candidates government give reservation
to all candidates belonging to respective category .Also in our judicial system
a very famous quote is “ 100 culprits could be freed to save one innocent
.“ So the thing is that 100 % transparency is not possible anywhere.We
have to think about stutters who are going to be benefited not about intruders.
View -6
Government
already have burden of reservations .
Reply: Please
read point no. 3 in view-5 reply.If we deserve we should go through.
View:7 I don’t want to be labelled as “Disabled.”
Reply :
That’s it.Almost in all cases a stutter hesitate to accept stammering as
disability because he don’t want to be labelled .We stutter take it to our
Ego.I already explained in view-3 that people already consider as disabled they
already consider stammering non-curable .When a person meet a stutter he never
think that one day that stutter will cure himself(some people suggest us that do this or that it will be cured,but actually those are the who are unaware of stuttering) .I suggest we can understand
stuttering better than others.
Story of a poor man.
A poor man in a village never applied for BPL (below poverty line) card because he do not want to be called as “poor”.He never applied for any government scheme for poor people because he thought that it's better to live in crises than that of being assumed as poor.What do you want to say about that person??..different people can have different opinions about it..but thing is that He just pretended to be rich or contented even he was not.
Same example is true for some of our
fellow PWS.In our TISA group we believe that Stammering is “Incurable” but we
can not ACCEPT it as disability although we often discuss on concept of ACCEPTANCE.Even
technically and logically stammering is a disability but still we pretend to be
alright.
View:8 "I see stammering more as a diversity rather than
a disability. I am more inclined in seeing stammering as a
"transfluency", the term introduced by Cristobal Loriente, a
researcher from Spain, and a pws himself. Transfluency means a speech which is
not fluent. It does not identify it as a speech 'impediment'. Why should we be looking for Sympathy and Pity
rather than looking for recognition and opportunities? I feel it's a step backwards.
Reply: Diversity does not affect someone’s life as stammering does.So we can’t consider it as diversity.If we talk about research of Mr Cristobal Loriente ,then I would like to say that There was no any need of such research in which after devoting so much time a researcher come to a point that ”Stammering means a speech which is not fluent”. Mr Cristobal had to come to any stutter he would have told him that ”Stammering means a speech which is not fluent” .He just given a different name to the stuttering i.e Transfluency.So all his efforts was for to give a different name to the stuttering.?? We are not looking for sympathy or Pity,We are discriminated in different ways in the society, We just need a tool to raise our voice against it.Accepting the truth and raising our voice against discrimination is not a step backward. If still someone consider it I would like to say..”Daag lagne se agar kuch achhcha hota hai to daag achhche hain.”
Reply: Diversity does not affect someone’s life as stammering does.So we can’t consider it as diversity.If we talk about research of Mr Cristobal Loriente ,then I would like to say that There was no any need of such research in which after devoting so much time a researcher come to a point that ”Stammering means a speech which is not fluent”. Mr Cristobal had to come to any stutter he would have told him that ”Stammering means a speech which is not fluent” .He just given a different name to the stuttering i.e Transfluency.So all his efforts was for to give a different name to the stuttering.?? We are not looking for sympathy or Pity,We are discriminated in different ways in the society, We just need a tool to raise our voice against it.Accepting the truth and raising our voice against discrimination is not a step backward. If still someone consider it I would like to say..”Daag lagne se agar kuch achhcha hota hai to daag achhche hain.”
G Guys give your valuable opinions and suggestions about
this issue in comment box.
Let us start discussing..
ReplyDelete..some of my friends told me that its a bit aggressive..guys..its my very first article..so pls dnt consider it..next time I will be more polite while writing any post. ...ur valuable comments are needed..
ReplyDeletehey amit, it is great that you have put all your beliefs and understanding and have involved many views and given some very new ideas(atleast to me). i havent yet read the whole article but have just gone through it. it would have been much better if the article was better structured and probably broken into parts (like a smaller blog today and further parts in upcoming blogs and so on).. this is because everybody has less time. i will read it by night and give you more inputs and then we can discuss it
ReplyDeleteThanks Aksahdeep for your comment. I will consider your suggestion while writing any post next time...
ReplyDeleteI agree and open discussion is required .
ReplyDeleteHello Bro, very good effort, a very nice awareness message, I agree with Aksahdeep, the article may be into 2-3 parts. But overall very nice. Keep the good work ahead...
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, hats off to u for such an brilliant article. I agree with u...We talk about acceptance and still deny it as disability,irony!!!! Recognising it as diability will go in long way in Empowering PWS towards his/r developement and to fight discrimination...also it will become a better tool of spreading awareness in society which we starve to do......
ReplyDeleteBest of luck....I recommand you to write more such articles and if possible for newspapers also since it will help to spread awareness in society...