It is a chance to improve conditions for the disabled participating in sports and to refresh the way disability is viewed.
August 30 was a big day for India in the Paralympics. Country Won five medals including two goldImprove the race of the Rio 2016 team in just one day. Like all Indians, Indians with disabilities are also proud of these achievements. It presents an opportune moment to reflect on how we can make Paralympic Truly counting for India.
The Paralympics are a unique opportunity to empower the disabled. It provides an opportunity for all to see disabled bodies in action and find equality with them in their shared desire for national success. The constant media attention ensures that athletes with disabilities capture the public imagination in unprecedented ways.
Discourses around the Disabled
In India, persons with disabilities find it extraordinarily difficult to live a life of equal productivity and dignity as their able-bodied counterparts. discourse around their status as Handicapped – Persons with divine bodies – promote their separation. Instead of viewing the disabled as normal individuals who require extra support to meet their unique needs, this language puts them on a different footing and presents them as endowed with supernatural powers. Instead of engaging with them in a meaningful, constructive way, many people either make a person’s disability their focal point, take away their multi-layered identity, or ignore their additional challenges altogether. Stereotypes and unfounded prejudices about the inability to make informed choices, and asexuality among others, are still alive and kicking.
So it’s no surprise that engaging in recreational activities like sports is rarely on the minds of people with disabilities. Even those persons with disabilities who wish to undertake such activities face formidable obstacles. Mainstream schools, parks, colleges and swimming pools do not provide a conducive environment for them. Arguments about complications and causing inconvenience to others are usually made to deny access. As a blind person, I remember being turned down by a swimming pool in Delhi when I approached them with a desire to pursue swimming classes. reason? He had received complaints from female swimmers about unwanted contact in the pool and felt that having a blind person in the pool could trouble him. One does not need to be a Paralympian to enjoy the benefits of sports. Recreational sports can help build identity, confidence, and a healthy relationship with your body. This is what many people with disabilities remember.
People with disabilities with more ambitious sporting aspirations often enter exploitative coaching relationships and navigate a complex and unfriendly sporting governance framework. This situation is particularly troubling as Section 30 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 requires appropriate governments and sports authorities to improve access to meaningful sporting opportunities for persons with disabilities. These include redesigning the infrastructure and providing multi-sensory essentials and facilities to make them more accessible in all sporting activities.
For India, success in these Paralympics will be truly meaningful only if it inspires introspection and reorientation. At the systemic level, it would have to incorporate governance reforms into the Paralympic Committee of India. The committee is now headed by a medalist former Paralympian Deepa Malik. The Union Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs brought parity in the cash award structure for medal-winning Paralympians to put them on an equal footing with their able-bodied counterparts in the Olympics. These are steps in the right direction.
an opportunity for all
To more inclusively deliver the value of sport, satellite television providers and sports broadcasters must take steps that enable the disabled to view and participate in sporting activities. In addition, photographs of the Paralympics on electronic media and social media must be accompanied by image descriptions for the visually impaired. On an individual level, everyone can see disabled athletes as a whole, acknowledging their additional challenges and striving to create more opportunities for people with disabilities in our lives to participate in all walks of life.
It is easy to admire the courage of our para-athletes from afar. It is very difficult to use these games as an opportunity to do our part to change things, to ensure that we are regularly surrounded by capable and motivated disabled people who are given extra support which they need to grow. With intention, determination and action, we can make Paralympics count for India not only in the medal tally but everyday.
Rhodes Scholar Rahul Bajaj is Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Center for Legal Policy
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