Counselor for the students with disabilities University College of Medical Sciences,
UCMS & GTB Hospital, Delhi
Non-institutional expert, Equality and Diversity Committee, Enabling Unit, UCMS & GTBH
Today I sit to write to you, because like so many fellow citizens of my country, I am also feeling suffocated, disappointed, somewhat angry and displeased by the word ‘’Divyang’’ being made official to address persons with disabilities.
Sir, I have always been a fan of yours and have admired the tough stands you take regarding various issues. You seemed to be like a rock, when it comes to concerns raised by ordinary citizens. But when we, the people with disabilities, asked for your attention as a citizen’s entitlement all our strong objections were ignored by your government. Now “Viklang jan” (persons with disabilities) has been replaced by the word with “Divyangjan” (persons with extraordinary abilities). How can the biggest democracy in the world ignore the genuine voice of 10% to 15% of its population! What precedence would this set?
Narendra Modi, Prime Minister, India
I sincerely doubt that your advisors and subordinates have ever apprised you in detail about UNCRPD as this law which has received is the government’s apathy and cold shoulder in our country.
Never mind Sir! Let me have the honours to bring it your kind notice that India was one of the first countries to ratify UN Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007. India was legally as well as constitutionally obligated to bring its domestic laws in line with the spirit and purpose of the same. But nine years down the line the perceptions of Indian parliamentarians fall far short of what it is bound to do.
Let me explain it you further. The UNCRPD lays a solid platform in Article 3 (c) for full and effective participation and inclusion of persons with disabilities in society and the General Obligations in Article 4(1), mandates the State Parties to closely consult with and actively involve persons with disabilities through their representative organizations and consult with them before deciding anything for them. But your cabinet minister has unheedingly stated, “Usually, we can take such a decision on our own but we decided to involve states and NGOs before sending the file to the PMO. There may be a few organisations that are not happy with the use of the term but it is not possible to consult everyone on the matter”.
Sir, if you care to through the document you would find specific mention in Article 4, paragraphs (a) and (b) of the Convention that:
“1. States Parties undertake to ensure and promote the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all persons with disabilities without discrimination of any kind on the basis of disability. To this end, States Parties undertake:
(a) To adopt all appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures for the implementation of the rights recognized in the present Convention;
(b) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices that constitute discrimination against persons with disabilities; …”
Though the Convention was seen as a significant step in the paradigm shift in India from charity and welfare to rights and empowerment of people with disabilities, we still are lingering on with the heavy baggage of stone aged concepts in the name of traditions. The CRPD seeks to alter old-fashioned attitudes and eliminate social barriers which prevent persons with disabilities from leading full lives on an equal basis with others. Remaining completely ignorant about the articles of UNCRPD your Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment recently gave an irrelevant and gratuitous statement in a national daily. In his own words, “The United Nations consulted many countries and came up with ‘persons with disability’. But in India, such people have been called Divyang right from the ancient times since they have a special body. In our culture, we have had gifted people like Asthavakra, the sage who had eight deformities or Surdas, the blind singer’’.
Let me remind you Sir that much water has flowed under the bridge since the times of Asthavakra and Surdas. This is 21st century and we we still are delving our heads into mythology to find solutions to the issues of the present days. Who does not know that Hindu mythology has been a bastion for the misinterpretation of disability? So what do we call this? Is it progression or regression?
Please allow me to enlighten you that such name callings create stereotypes reducing the individuality and character of people to false social constructs, undercutting the humanity of the target group. Your good intentions would lead to unfortunate implications. I believe that you are oblivious of the fact that this word demarcates, but in a saccharine manner. It is forcefully pushing us back into ancient times when charity was the only way on which persons with disabilities could survive. With such a figurative language of disability how can we be recognised as full participants in social, economic and political conversations in the country.
Let me ask you if you really believe that putting us on a pedestal would bring a shift in attitudes of the society? In that case sir, you are highly mistaken!! The term has already began “othering” us and the day is not far away when it would be used an abuse! Solutions to the appalling problems do not come up instantaneously with embellished words and glossy terminology. Such tactics might work well during election campaigns, but serious and delicate issues of society demand in depth study of the subject and a rational thinking.
The term would have patronizing effect on people with disabilities, relegating them to low-skill jobs, setting different job standards and sometimes lower standards which tend to alienate them, or expecting a worker with a disability to appreciate the opportunity to work instead of demanding equal pay, equal benefits, equal opportunity and equal access to workplace amenities.
Whole world knows that you are a greater orator and have strong foothold over language. I assume that you very well understand what implications language and words can have on the psyche of the common people. With all its damaging effect it would reduces a person to his physical body. Sir, we are more than our bodies and do not want lose our self identity in the process of others being presumptive about our lives. We would not like to be treated as a ‘bulk’.
Sir today I write as a proud person with disability. I am a polio survivor and I can bet that polio virus has, in no way, made any of my body parts divine!! So let me inform you I am not a DIvyang! My disability is not a misfortune warranting charitable considerations. Being celebrated as in touch with the divine, for just coping up, not only negates our own achievements, but also sets aspirations very low. Please do not encroach upon the human angle of our lives. We are ordinary individuals seeking to live ordinary lives. Allow us to have dignity of risk and the possibility of failure.
We have been hearing disability service providers talking, talking, and only talking about what “those people need” or how “those people can’t” do this or that. We have had enough of the ‘’pity party’’. Let me reiterate my statement that we are capable of exerting choices. We see ourselves not as objects of care or humanitarian concerns but as citizens with all the rights and duties that full citizenship entails. Thus no one should dare to indulge in our systematic disempowerment along with reinforced dependency. Our idea of self determination expands the notion of independence from physical achievements to personal, political and socio-economic decision making.
All over the world, people with disabilities are themselves acting as catalysts of change. The desire to no longer remain as passive recipients of care has resulted in their struggle to acquire rights to achieve full participation.
Respected Mr Prime Minister, if we were really ‘Divyang’ then we would not have been so often humiliated due to the huge gaps in service provisions in relation to housing, education, employment, transport/mobility and personal assistance. We do not want non disabled to decide what is best for us and how our needs should be met.
Do you not, Mr. Prime Minister, agree and realise that disability is not so much a condition of the human body as it is of an environment and society that disables us from accessing rights and living a full life. If you really want to do something for us then please make sure that the state recognises its responsibility and work towards ending the reign of inaccessibility instead of coining shallow and superfluous caconyms. I don’t blame you for that because understanding our struggles and straggles necessitate disability consciousness.
When you became our Prime Minister there was a kind of excitement and optimism that ran through my veins and I wrote a lot about it on social media. For me my country was saffronized as saffron is the colour of connection, a sense of community, belonging and social aspects of being. But I am pained to see that India still remains pigmented in shades of black and white. Why can’t we have an intricate weave with all colors present, a multitude of texture?
Sir as you keep on visiting various countries, you may be aware of the best practices going on globally. For instance, recently President Obama who blocked the federal government from using the words “Negro” and “Oriental” to describe blacks and Asians. This has been done because they want people of all backgrounds to be treated with dignity and respect.
I am also apprehensive and concerned about the reaction of United Nations when they come to know that actualization of this bedecked term ‘Divyang’ is a premeditated act of the State, superficially implying positive representation but perpetuating a discourse of negativity around it. It reminds me of Chinese people who maimed themselves or their children so that they would make more, begging.
Let us celebrate each other, in all of our individual and collective awesomeness. Let’s celebrate disability and all the opportunities for growth it presents. Let us renew our pledge to do what all we can to shift the paradigm of prejudice or stereotypes regarding disability. Let’s promise to try to treat people as they are. We are not conditions, not diseases, not shattered pieces, not inspirations, not supercrips, not anything else, other than human beings.
Sir we have heard that slogans for all your much hyped campaigns like Make in India, Skilled India, Beti Bachao, Swachh Bharat etc were created by advertising agencies. But for us, let me give you a ready made slogan used multiple time in UNCRPD and it is ‘’Nothing about us without us’’. Let us develop the strength to include everyone to add their creativity, intelligence and spark of life and make things glorious rather than glorifying impairments. Sir, give us accessibility and we shall give you productivity but we neither possess divinity nor exuberate the same just to inspire others!
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He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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First published at:
">Roger Kotila PhD Dr Gary G Kohls MD[/caption]
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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First published at :
">Leo M SemashkoRobert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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">Robert C KoehlerRobert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
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">Robert J BurrowesProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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First published at :
">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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First published at :
">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
Sir we have heard that slogans for all your much hyped campaigns like Make in India, Skilled India, Beti Bachao, Swachh Bharat etc were created by advertising agencies. But for us, let me give you a ready made slogan used multiple time in UNCRPD and it is ‘’Nothing about us without us’’. Let us develop the strength to include everyone to add their creativity, intelligence and spark of life and make things glorious rather than glorifying impairments. Sir, give us accessibility and we shall give you productivity but we neither possess divinity nor exuberate the same just to inspire others! 
