08/09/2025
APAAR continues to swim upstream. That means against the current.
The Government agencies continue to ignore cooperating with us, they have all the money and no vision, APAAR has the vision and limited resources. The young man in the photo was evaluated at home last week by APAAR. He needs simple behavioural interventions to become ADL independent so his father may go to work selling vegetables on his rehri instead of hanging around at home which the young man demands, spiralling the family further into poverty. Forget a government resource room evaluation which the family did not get ( in the heart of Jalandhar ). The young man is almost 19 year old and being guided towards rehabilitation for the first time now.
APAAR hired a Masters in Social Work (MSW) two years ago at a salary APAAR had to stretch its fiscal capacity for. The goal was to dedicate time to government collaboration , which is essential for NGOs’ to make impact.
This MSW tried to contact multiple government departments: SMOs’, District Social Security Office , Disability Commissioner ( receptive but holding too many posts to do anything substantive)— ran into walls each time. We h=gave up after three months and let the MSW go.
After seven years of trying to get into a district SMO meeting , APAAR gave up there too.
The Punjab government has not hired special educators since 2009. No Punjabi youth want to be social educators.
Distt Jalandhar ’s resource rooms ( for educating disabled children below age 18) are run by volunteers who had not been trained in 10 years until APAAR complained that volunteers did not know sign language for deaf students. Then a training happened.
District Special educators establish homes and private businesses in one district and avoid transfers, they are “supervised” by Distt Education officers who have no idea what programs are ongoing and don’t know the whereabouts of the District Special Educator who never answers APAAR’s phone calls.
Care homes are not supervised for accountability. Kids with cerebral palsy remain untreated, crawling on all fours till adulthood or death, though the government has crores of funds from the central government to do surgeries and [physical therapy.
APAAR has tried in vain to collaborate with local administration to enroll the disabled ( autistic / cerebral palsy/ ID / multiple disabilities) in the Niramaya health insurance scheme with NO success. All that was needed is training/ assigning paramedical staff to APAAR.
The National Trust in Delhi has deteriorated so much since 2014 that one wastes hours in paperwork and gets no funds to reimburse Niramaya insured families for medical expenses.
The National Trust board has members from Punjab doing nothing for the disabled. Registered NGOs have ceased to be National Trust members as the assistance to NGOs’ is minimum to absent and renewing resgitration takes hours of paperwork.
Therapy centres are profiteering with hour- long “therapies” — with total disregard for academics and the necessity for peer interaction to develop social skills and aid self-actualisation.
Insiders who know this in Delhi inform us that there have been three attempts by the govt to close the National Trust. It is ineffectual for a reason . The Chief Disability Commissioner has too many posts : Secretary , Dept of Disability Affairs , Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Chairperson National Trust—-
10. Handicrafts made in rehab NGO’s like APAAR are hard to sell as ARUNIM was dissolved by this current government years ago. Disability in Corporate frenzied “ development” times — who are we kidding ?
Rehabilitation of the specially abled or Divyaang is no one’s priority. Railway stations in India are disabled inaccessible as I pointed out with a train’s compartment picture some months ago on APAAR’s social media. UDID cards do not work for railway concessions.
And when election time for National Trust board membership comes around every September, one gets emails and more emails for votes.
To which APAAR today says thanks- voting is not worth our precious time. APAAR’s emails complaining all year go unacknowledged, then voting times we get emails.
What a farce the central agencies and state government ( no agencies no burden) are for the disabled.
Oh- that picture on the bottom right is a young man we have forgotten. This was from a home visit some years ago in a village we no longer have the resources to cover. He was captive at home, the family content and accustomed to his captivity. Never been treated / trained in ADLs. Never had a home visit. Resource rooms !! D GRADE.
