“Whenever I saw children going to school I felt very bad that I could not. I was 18 and I would just around all day. I expressed my wish to study to my teachers at the home. They put me in a regular school. At first I was scared of the subjects and the exam. But I passed a subject. One day I want to buy a house.” Sita (name changed) said all this without saying a word. The speech-impaired teenager is one of a group of children from the Mentally Deficient Children’s home (MDC) in Mankhurd who have battled the odds of their condition to go through formal schooling and learn subjects such as Math and Science, as part of Project Chunauti, started by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Chunauti was the result of the recommendations of a state-level coordination committee for child protection, set up after media exposes in 2010 of deaths, severe malnutrition and sexual abuse faced by children’s homes in Thane and Panvel. Of the 103 children who are part of Project Chunauti, 35 were rescued from the infamous Kavdas and Kalyani children’s homes. These children were given counselling before they could be put into the formal schooling programme.
“Acceptance was a major issue when the intellectually-challenged children were in regular schools,” TISS professor Asha Bajpai, director of the project told The Hindu . “They faced discrimination from fellow students as well as teachers, because teachers too have to be sensitive. We had a team of special teachers to coach the children separately, but they sat with the other children. Now they are able to cope.”
The Bombay High Court converted the 2010 media reports into a PIL and set up a committee headed by Ms. Bajpai to look into the condition of MDCs across Maharashtra. The court then issued directions to the government based on the recommendations.
“Under the project, we started the right to education for the first time,” Ms. Bajpai said. “Earlier, the education given to these children was based on play activity. It was not structured. We sent them for structured learning in regular schools under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the National Institute of Open Schooling. Our aim is to take the children towards independent living.”
The experience of formal learning has given wings to the aspirations of the students: while one child wished to learn English, another dreamt of buying a home of her own.
Sarita Shankaran, member of the State Coordination Committee, said, “When we visited the MDCs, we found that special children did not go to school. There was also an absence of special schools in many places. So we thought of reaching education to them. People also doubted the ability of these children to learn. The children have proved that they can go to school and read and write. We can give them a future through skill training and an independent life.”
Of the 300 children at Mankhurd, children with an IQ above 50 were selected for the programme. Many of them were also in their late teens and of 18 years. The project, funded by the National Stock Exchange, entailed an annual cost of Rs. 43,000 per child.
“These programmes are slow, but they are needed,” said Reema Mohan, Head, CSR, NSE.. “The amount of money involved in CSR is a drop in the ocean. Corporates and governments should jointly fund such initiatives.”
The High Court has proposed the project as a model of rehabilitation for MDC in the State. “We want the High Court to stay with the project. We wanted to bring about a broader change and not limit the project to just one home,” TISS Director Prof. S. Parasuraman said.
The writer is a freelance journalist
Acceptance was a major issue when the intellectually-challenged children were in regular schools
Asha BajpaiProfessor, TISS
