Rights of person with special abilities under the disabilities Act 1995 a critical analysis

Abstract

There are 600 million persons with disabilities in the world today. Eighty percent of them live in developing countries. A staggering 90 million people in India are disabled. That?s almost one in every ten. These figures in the very beginning of this article are not mentioned to create any sympathy for persons with disabilities. The aim of mentioning these figures here is to illustrate that still 600 million persons with disabilities are being prevented from contributing to the world society (whether socially or economically) because of the barrier called disability. However, there has been a shift in international thinking on disability from largesse-based perspective to rights-based perspective. The world for and of the disabled is changing at a rapid pace and the aspirations as well as expectations of people are also changing as fast. Advances in medical and surgical sciences, breakthroughs in technology, greater understanding of the causes of disability and improved methods of coping with it, increasing consciousness of civil rights and the emergence of people with disabilities displaying skills and knowledge to improve their own lives, are some of the factors which have contributed to the new thinking. It is now recognized that the disabled deserve a dignified status in society on the same terms as the non-disabled. Disabled people are a vast minority group, which has been subjected to direct and indirect discrimination for centuries in most countries of the world, including India. The human rights movement has boldly and categorically shifted the attention of policy-makers from the mere provision of charitable services to vigorously protecting their basic right to dignity and self-respect. In the new scenario, the disabled are viewed as individuals with a wide range of abilities and each one of them willing and capable of utilizing his/her potential and talents.