vital statistics

Disability in india has been a neglected subject since long. THe british had made our country disabled in terms of economy and polity. The process of rehabilitation started soon after the independence and now a days our country is standing on its own feet in many respects.
       But unfortunately, a significant part of our population namely' disabled' remained unnoticed no matter who ruled the country either british or indian. In terms of rehabilitation services, there remained a big vaccum. Lack of professionals, wrong policies, lack of govt. fund, lack of technology- these may be some big reasons. But as i think, the bigest reason is the lack of awareness about disability in common masses. Many case of disability can be treated successfully if we do early detection of disability  and apply early intervention. Once left in ignorance, the case reaches in a state when only a little can be done. Almost negligible is done to increase the awareness level of  common people towars disabiliti related aspects.
now, there arises big question- if lack of awareness is the root cause of  the ironical condition of the disabled population in india ( maybe somewhere else too!) then what should be the remeady? To answer this question is quite difficult and will vary on individual thinking.
In my view, education in the proper direction helps to the solution of problems. if lack of awareness is a problem, then it is a  good way to fight with it is to spread the education. if people are taught about the disability aspects, the awareness level will automatically rise .
then next question arises, how to educate the people about disability? Earlier, there was only one way- to do grass root level campaigning. Now a days, there are many- internet, magazines, seminars. By using these means- even a small group of people or organization can reach a big sphere of masses. No doubt, grassroot level campaigning will always have central importance because it  uses the direct form of communication and has long lasting influences.
now, the next question- what should be the right approach towards educating the people about disability?
in my view, for getting the right approach we will have to combine all the means of communications in a single media to get desired effect. To make it more clear, i am providing an example. suppose, an ngo perform an awareness camp in a village focussing on disabled as well as normal people. they distribute booklets containing vital informations in the local language. they share thir expriences through their website and magazine and they run councelling services on website as well as on phone. In this example a centralized agency is using all possible means of communication for two purposes- to spread the knowledge as well as to get the feedback. By using all these means of communication, every organization can broaden their sphere of influence to reach maximum number of people.
since the number of disabled population is large and number of professionals is very less, infact in some rural areas it is almost negligible.In this situation this combined approach becomes essential if we want to see good results inspite of limited manpoer and economic resources