Learning Disabilities In India

Learning disability: Let me initially not broaden the topic with the perception and view of the world to the words and types like dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, ADHD, etc. which we can find on internet.

Let me narrow it to my country India. Yes, there are orphanages, major number of institutions, schools demanding lot of money for physically and mentally disabled. This country has rural villages too.

People in this country are worried, scared to go out and speak truth which is happening with them.
My father: I am a graduate in engineering. It took seven years for me to complete my engineering because of innumerous reasons. Kicking my weaknesses, I’ve learned to give interviews and clear them for six consecutive months and got job in 2014 July. I was happy and satisfied and was very happy for my new adventures and journey.

Now I am a teacher in Rajasthan, far form my city in Andhra Pradesh. Even now, my salary is 15000 INR. I am not handicapped (though physically and mentally I feel that I am). I am earning whatever I can with/ by skills and being peaceful anywhere /any part of the world. But my dad isn’t happy or comfortable discussing my job or my salary with my relatives. I believe this is his learning disability from and throughout his age of fifty+ years and the bloody foolish society has injected this into his mind - the side and illiterate fools.

-Back to the topic- Of course everyone is scared because the society injects fear in you. That fear which has no roots than that of your thought process. No good is involved apart from the fraud you’re committing to your soul, either by hiding or by suffering in agony.

Let me take the support of a couple of movies here. “Sangharshana” a particular scene which narrates the domestic violence and superstitions (which are mostly suppressing women- female gender) says that a man beats his wife and prove to his parents that she’s mentally disabled and she dances while the moon is full or none (a superstition in India when spirits get free during new moon and full moon days); with the lust to marry his sister in law. In the same movie another scene depicts the story of a wife who has tortured his husband mentally and sends him to the mental asylum. She denies to attend his funeral and offer lump some to the organization to finish off the rituals.

In the movie “Kshanam”, a girl and a boy love each other. They fail to get married. To the man whom she is married to isn’t looking after her. It happens that her daughter gets kidnapped when she calls his boyfriend. The story goes like the daughter was of the lovers and since both the world and the boyfriend didn’t believe her, she commits suicide. This is not the story of a suspense thriller or the crime thriller, the fact and the condition of the world which is failing to learn due to the disabilities of society and the fears inside.

Let me come to another face of this topic. I am a teacher, teaching in a school in a village of Malwara 343039 of the state Rajasthan in India. Here the word “spelling” is pronounced as “meaning” by the teachers themselves. Students failing to do their homework throughout the year. Change of time-table, subjects and the teachers/staff allocated for the subjects by the Principal due to lot of absenteeism and dropping of teachers. And the major gap of medium of the teaching, which can never be reciprocated to the students even after continuous efforts by the teachers.

Lacking in first steps of childcare and fear to ask others or to learn from the doctors is leading all the named disabilities. Let us discuss in more detail -…

You must have heard about “Malala”. A girl from those Muslim countries where women education is least entertained. Similar are the Indian states where women education as well as the female sex-ratio are declining because of which PM Modi has slogans of “Beti bachao, Beti padhao”, which means save the girl child and educate the girl child.

To be honest, apart from visiting orphanages and NGO’s couple of times, I do not have any other engagements with them/those who are physically or mentally handicapped; and have seen the movie “Taare Zameen Par” which is completely based on “Dyslexia”. I’ve never come across any other disability.

Hence, I am speaking about the case sensitive topics which have more seviour effects than the known disabilities. – Honor killing in India

Scheduled caste literacy in 1961 was 28% and has increased to 73% by 2011.
According to 2011, 42% of Muslims in India are illiterates.

Caste, creed, colour, (with respect to Africans/Blacks), sex (with respect to women, especially Muslims) and many other discriminations.

As the topic is on and about learning disabilities let me speak; - student’s curiosity.
It is the major cause and a disability I’ve observed in school children. They do not understand and work harder. They don’t even do their homework. I was the same kid back in late 1990’s. Let me tell you something which I have just remembered. It is the fumbling defect, Abraham Lincoln had and some other author whose name I couldn’t recollect.

Hereby, I conclude by saying that it’s a perception of what you consider a defect.