The Theory of Probability says if there are only two likelihoods, the chance of either happening is 50 percent. Now, saying that each able-bodied person always carries a 50 percent risk of becoming disabled might sound farfetched to many of us, but those who have lost their limbs, eyes or capacity to hear in accidents would know better.
We live in a world where accidents occur everyday, and persons with disabilities are everywhere. But have we done enough to make the world disabled-friendly?
A few weeks ago, I received an email about a discussion on “From ‘cared for’ to ‘carer’: Experience of motherhood of disabled women in Nepal.”[break]
Neeti Aryal Khanal, Lecturer of Sociology at the Tribhuvan University, was presenting her still-in-progress research on challenges of motherhood faced by disabled women. (The venue was Martin Chautari in Thapathali.) Khanal’s paper focused on disabled women’s experience of pregnancy, childbearing and childrearing, and how society can make that experience worse or satisfying.
The very first thing that comes to our mind is whether disabled women, who are seen as themselves needing care, are fit to be mothers, who are regarded as care givers.
This fact can be illustrated no better than by an experience shared by a woman interviewed by Aryal during the course of her research.
“Once I heard my family talking about me. They were saying it would be such a relief if I never menstruated at all. I heard my parents talking with my brothers about removing my uterus. I heard them saying that they should have cut and thrown away my uterus before I menstruated. They feared that I may be raped and will be in trouble.”
Aryal’s research also quotes the same woman saying how her mother had tried to dissuade her from marrying. “See, I’m having such a hard time. You can’t have children, so it’s better not to marry.”
Aryal gave another example in which a doctor had scolded a disabled woman, who had just given birth to a child, for deciding to become a mother.
It isn’t hard to imagine the kind of debilitating effects such attitude, from people (family members and doctors) whose support even able-bodied persons need, could have had on the women in question.
It is quite likely that it was against the backdrop of these discriminatory views that a new kind of thinking called “social model of disability” emerged in the 1970s. According to the model, “It is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society.”
A website lists several ways how “society disables physically impaired people.”
People most often do not talk to a disabled person directly, but to their caregivers instead. It is often called ‘does he take sugar?’ syndrome. They normally display patronizing attitude towards disabled people. Patronization is the deliberate or accidental undermining of someone’s intelligence. People who are patronizing often do not understand they had caused any offence. Then there are special schools that tell people with disabilities that they are not normal.
“While it is true some disabled people need education adapted to their level of ability,” the website says, “There is no reason why this can not be done within a mainstream school.”
There are lots of examples of how disabled people, with or without the support of those around them, have excelled in their life. Though most of us are prone to expressing pity on seeing disabled people, we forget that the achievements of physically challenged scientist Stephen Hawking and Nepali litterateur Jhamak Kumari Ghimire can put many of us able-bodied people to shame. Thousands of other people with disabilities have overcome the same difficulties able-bodied face to achieve great success in life.
Though disabled people are seen as burden, progress in technology has been playing a role to change that situation. Use of prosthetics, wheelchairs, hearing aids and surgeries has enabled disabled people to function more or less as able-bodied ones.
So, instead of calling disabled people “bichara!” and resorting to regressive tactics to avoid having to deal with their problems, all of us should contribute to creating enabling environment for the disabled.
As discussed in the beginning, disability is not something that a person gets only in birth. Each of us can have a misfortune to be in an accident and become disabled any day. In fact, nobody can escape disability because as we grow old our body loses the ability to hear, see, walk, and then there is always the risk of disabilities induced by diseases.
But even if we stick to the 50 percent chance, as per the Probability Theory, of able-bodied persons becoming disabled, it makes sense for everybody to lend 100 percent support to those who are fighting to make this world disabled-friendly. Who knows, we ourselves might be the ones to benefit from the push someday.
The writer is a copy editor at Republica.
amendrapokharel@gmail.com
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