NEVER SAY NO TO VISUALLY IMPAIRED WOMEN SEEKING SUPPORT – By N.S.Venkataraman
Visual impairment ( blindness) is the most severe form of physical disability that section of human beings endure. The consequences of visual disability would be more severe, if it were to happen to a woman. Added to this, if the visually impaired woman were to belong to lower income group with little financial support, it is difficult even to imagine the plight of such women. There are lakhs of such visually impaired living not only in India but in other parts of the world too. The problems faced by visually impaired women appear to be largely similar all over the world .
Government’s support :
In India, while the governments extend some sort of support to visually impaired persons, the support is marginal . The governments can do only so much , considering their other commitments. In extending support , in most cases , no distinction is made between visually impaired men and visually impaired women.
Sense of loneliness :
In most cases, visually impaired women find that they are left high and dry and feeling that they are forced to live lonely and isolated life. This feeling is common amongst visually impaired women, irrespective of their financial status. This is the ground reality. .
The efforts :
In spite of their problems , these days visually impaired women try to get formal education by attending special schools and a few of them join colleges to qualify themselves . There are problems here too ,since there are only a very few educational institutions that can cater to the specific needs of the visually impaired women.
Visually impaired women who get such qualification is only a small percentage of their overall population, since many of them live in small towns and rural areas , where there are several constraints for them including accessibility to educational institutions in near by location.
Most of such visually impaired students are admitted only to arts courses and not science or technical subjects and number of them get themselves qualified for teaching profession.
Job prospects :
Government schools and colleges and other government departments have some reservation policy to provide jobs for visually impaired persons . However, a number of these reserved job positions remain unfilled due to several administrative lacuna. In the case of such reserved positions , visually impaired women have to compete with the visually impaired men! In other words , there is no special reservation quota for visually impaired women in government jobs.
While such visually impaired women who get jobs are “fortunate lot”, thousands of visually impaired women do not have this benefit. The private sector rarely employ visually impaired person, leave alone visually impaired women.
Role of family :
In the case of visually impaired women, the parents take care of them to some extent. However, after passing away of their parents, most of visually impaired women receive little support from other family members, probably due to poor economic conditions of the other family members. It is pathetic sight to see visually impaired women struggling to make both ends meet by selling assorted items in the streets or in running trains and sometimes even a few of them joining together to form a music group and walking in crowded area singing some songs , to draw the attention of the public to receive alms.
Married life :
Most of the visually impaired women get married to visually impaired men , as normal men rarely come forward to marry visually impaired women. Even in such cases , a few of visually impaired couple get separated after a few years, possibly due to poverty conditions and stressful life.
Children :
It is gratifying to see that the children of the visually impaired couple generally have good eyesight and the parents try to get them educated mostly in the government run institutions, as they cannot afford to admit them in costly private institutions. Unfortunately, a few cases have been seen, where the children after getting grown up, do not take care of the visually impaired mothers adequately well. In other words the sufferings of the visually impaired women start from the beginning of their life and up to end of their life.
Reconciliation :
One redeeming feature seen amongst the visually impaired women is that they try to cheer themselves to some extent in the company of other visually impaired women, reconciling themselves to “ injustice” done to them by God , which is beyond the understanding of anyone. The visually impaired women laughing and joking together in their group meetings, concealing the inner stress in their mind , speaks volume about their sort of philosophical outlook to life and to reconcile themselves to their conditions, where there is no possibility of relief.
Society’s responsibility :
To cut this long story short, it is suffice to state that the society should find some ways and means to support the visually impaired women in the form of money and material and with kind words and counselling., Certainly, this would provide some sort of satisfaction to visually impaired women , though their pain cannot be entirely wiped out .
The society certainly has the responsibility towards the visually impaired women. One has to admit that , by and large , society is not responding in the way that it should , possibly since the severe problems faced by visually impaired women are not adequately publicised.
Of course, there are noble organisations and kind hearted people who do support them but certainly they are few and far between.
In Tamil Nadu state , there are reported to be more than five lakh visually impaired women , with 90% of hem facing poverty conditions. There must be atleast more than one crore people in Tamil Nadu with affordable income . If ten such persons in affordable income group would join together and support one visually impaired woman for their entire life, perhaps, there would be less pain for the visually impaired women and the overall society would be deemed to be responsible and care giving.
A matter of concern .
These days very frequently we read in the media about young women being attacked and molested by intoxicated men. In such conditions, one shudders to think about the threat for safety of visually impaired women , who cannot see whether it is red colour or white colour.
