Pulling the brakes on a dream

Riddhi Shah has never truly experienced sound The 24yearold cannot respond to us verbally but she can communicate effortlessly in a language she understands the Indian Sign Language ISL Shah cannot hear traffic snarls the clamour of hawkers the sharp whistle of the police hawaldar on the roads of her hometown Jalgaon though horns are audible to her with the help of a hearing aid But she can drive her twowheeler across the city in a manner that outshines othersYet Shah doesnrsquot qualify for a licence issued by the Regional Transport Office despite Section 8 of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 and a Bombay High Courtjudgementndashboth of which when read together recognise her right to drive according to the Union Road Transport Ministry Such is the case with her parents who like Shah have hearing disabilitiesIt is also the reality of a majority of the 15 lakh deaf individuals in Maharashtra per estimates by the State Level Association of the Deaf SLAD ldquoI took the test and passed twice once in 2018 and then in 2019 Even now I have been asking transport officials where my licence is but there is no clear responserdquo says Shah with the help of a certified interpreter for this story Tejal PatwariRaju Waghmare helps scores of disabled individuals who arrive at JJ Hospital to obtain UDID cards PicSayyed Sameer AbediDespite this she persists zipping across Jalgaon on her twowheeler with a bag full of mehendi cones Shahrsquos clients are the numerous families of Jalgaon who hear of her skills through word of mouth She is vital to their many celebrations as she spends hours crafting intricate patterns on the palms of relatives and guestsDecember 2023 saw the rolling out of a scheme by the state governmentrsquos Department of Social Justice and Special Assistancersquos disability welfare division promising an evehicle to persons with disabilities The purpose behind this scheme was to facilitate selfemployment The evehicle in question resembles a rickshaw or minitempo with a large compartmentalised storage space in the back It will enable the disabled to take their services and businesses to different locationsAs of now the budget for this seemingly promising scheme is R25 crore per Abhay Kargutkar the director of the Maharashtra State Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation MSHFDC Those with 40 per cent and more disability had until January 4 to avail of the scheme the deadline was extended by an additional four days and finally on January 9 the Department announced that registrations have been shut for the financial year 202324 The scheme will accept more applications only in April now when the next financial year begins It will now be an annual affair in a phased manner says KargutkarManoj Patwari Raju Waghmare and Ketan MaruData on the application portal tells us that 45389 people have registered themselves for the first round of the scheme Most of these applicants live with locomotor disabilities many of whom are issued a driving licence without much resistance by officialsThe vetting of these thousands of applications is based on the 13point terms and conditions specified by the Department In all only 667 of those who have appliedmdasha mere one per centmdashwill receive the vehicle ldquoAllotment will be in accordance with the percentage of disabilityrdquo Kargutkar says ldquoThose who qualified but did not make it in the first round will have their applications moved ahead for consideration in the second roundrdquoAdditionally the government has put a cap on the number of vehicles that can be distributed in each district This figure will be in proportion to the population of people with disabilities in that particular district as per the last released data Notably neither of these conditions have been mentioned on the websiteWhen questioned about the disproportionate number of disabled people applying for the scheme as compared to their population the director of MSHFDC defended the figures The reason Kargutkar says is because the scheme is only applicable to those between the ages of 18 to 55According to the NSS those who are 60 and above make up only 63 per cent of the total population of persons with disabilities ldquoChief Minister Eknath Shinde is closely monitoring this scheme He tells us the work we are doing is auspiciousrdquo says the MSHFDC director adding that the government resolution for the scheme was issued in 2019 but its implementation started only last monthWhatsApp groups with 3000 members of the deaf community came abuzz in December soon after the announcement of the scheme This is how Shah learnt of this new and attractive promise Shersquos been a mehendi artist since she was a teen now in her early 20s she earns Rs 10000 each month during the rest of the year and twice as much during wedding season For her the scheme brought with it the hope of expanding her business and new ideas about setting up a travelling shop of her own where she could readily showcase her designs and amass more returnsWhen the time came to fill up the application for the scheme there was only one thing standing in her way Its terms and conditions required disabled persons to have driving licences If not one could still avail of the scheme on the condition that there would be another person with a driving licence handling the vehicle at all times Discouraged Shah did not move ahead with her applicationAnother criterion of the scheme mandates that applicants should be holders of a unique disability identity card UDID with an annual income of not more than R25 lakh Disabled individuals like Shah obtain this card despite the complex web of bureaucracy that surrounds its procedures and the multiple rounds of governmentrun or municipal corporationrun hospitals one has to make It is not uncommon for people to be passed on from one hospital to the next from one department to another from one doctor to a second and thirdIn the end says Raju Waghmare there is still no guarantee that the card will reach the doorsteps of the applicant ldquoThey should not have included the UDID as a condition if they wanted a large number of people to avail of itrdquo the visually impaired social worker at JJ Hospital says to middayldquoA disability certificate should have sufficedrdquoAt present applications are processed further even without UDIDs only to be rejected at a later stage Kargutkar says the Department is considering tweaking the application portal to make the UDID mandatory so the form doesnrsquot proceed in the first placeAccording to disability rights activists the number of people who possess these cards make up a very small minority of the community across the country The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice in its report tabled in the Lok Sabha last July notes that the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities has issued only a little over 9409 lakh UDIDs since 2017 Even a decade ago the population of persons with disabilities was twice that number the Committee saidIn Waghmarersquos opinion it is the crucial importance given to the UDID that has excluded a large number of people ldquoDisability certificates can be forged there have been instances where abled individuals have secured jobs on the basis of a fake certificate We have made the UDID a must to avoid such situationsrdquo says Kargutkar even as he acknowledges the limited reach of the digital IDWhether it is UDID cards or driving licences for the deaf the road to availing entitlements is paved with mockery and humiliation in government offices says Ketan Maru ldquoThere are no interpreters the officials expect us to talk They insist that we canrsquot hear but can speak which is not always the caserdquo the Mumbaibased Zomato delivery agent explainsAs a result the deaf are often accompanied by family members who translate sign language into verbal communication Data from the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre under the Social Justice Department tells us that India has 325 interpreters of which only 263 are active and 35 of them are located in Maharashtra Most of these 35 interpreters are concentrated in and around Mumbai with a few in PuneAt the nearly 200yearold JJ Hospital where thousands of disabled individuals across Maharashtra come to obtain UDID cards Waghmare helps them navigate the processmdashand sometimes that comes at a cost ldquoThere is no interpreter here Their fees can surpass Rs 1000 per hour I make video calls to an interpreter when deaf individuals visit the office But their fees come directly from my pocketrdquoManoj Patwari 53 runs the WhatsApp group for the deaf that Maru and Shah are part of The Jalna resident who serves as president of the State Level Association of the Deaf points out the ironic outcome of poor advertisement of government policies like the evehicle scheme they exclude the deaf community because they are not widely available through a visual medium ldquoI am in frequent communication with officials which is why I know about them schemes but that is not the case with everyone I relay the information ahead to the small number of deaf people in my WhatsApp groupsrdquo he saysMeetings have been held between the disability bodies and transport officials where the latter expressed reluctance in providing a driving licence to the deaf citing safety concerns Mumbaibased Taslim Sheikh whose husband has a hearing disability is another of the few certified interpreters in India ldquoHe was denied a driving licence initially It was only after he visited the RTO office with a set of legal documents highlighting the rules that allowed licences for the deaf that the process moved forwardrdquo she saysPatwari insists that the fairness of the conditions in the evehicle scheme are contextual and differ according to specific disabilities Waghmare for one is relieved that there is a provision for an escort or a helper to handle the vehicle in the absence of a driving licence This provision effectively opens it up to hundred per cent visuallyimpaired individuals like himBut it does not serve the deaf says Patwari who raises a pertinent question to which officials have no answer Why should a deaf individual depend on a helper if they can drive with ease and the law allows them to do so ldquoWe are willing to accept the condition if the government pays for the helperrdquo Patwari asserts When Kargutkar was told about this potential bargain he responded by saying ldquoWhat matters is that this freeofcost scheme is a start It will be improved upon as we progressrdquoSince the scheme remains far beyond her reach Shah suggests an alternativemdashone with fewer stringent terms and conditions that includes all people with disabilities Such as access to commercial properties in locations which see significant footfallsUntil then she will continue to use her twowheeler to take her mehendi business far and wide ldquoI have been caught by the traffic police a few times It takes some effort to make traffic hawaldars realise that I am deaf Sometimes I write on a piece of paper if they do not understand my signs But I have never been finedrdquo she says667No of applicants to the scheme who will receive evehicles from a total of 45389Rs 25 crBudget of scheme to provide evehicles to disabled individualsHidden figures Therersquos a dearth of reliable government data on the population of persons with disabilities in both Maharashtra and India The union government estimates of the population with disabilities still rely on the 2011 Census which states that out of the 121 crore citizens at the time India was home to 268 crore persons with disabilities 221 per cent of the total populationSimilar figures appear in the 76th round of the National Sample Survey conducted between July 2018 to December 2018 which estimates the population to be 22 per cent of Indiarsquos total at the time with 23 per cent residing in rural areas and 20 per cent in urban areas In Maharashtra the same NSS estimates 19 per cent of the population lives with disabilities with 21 per cent in rural areas and 16 per cent in urban areas On the other hand the latest National Family Health Survey NHFS5 takes the countrywide figure down a few notches reporting that there were only one per cent of people with disabilities in the years 2019 and 2021 These figures have been disputed by members of the disabled community who state that the methodology is flawed and that the numbers exceed what the government estimates The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice too challenged the numbers in its report tabled in the Lok Sabha last July