Challenging the 'disability'

For fifteen-year-old Saima, life changed when she entered a classroom. Although she cannot see, she is studying in class four in a school run by Humanity Welfare Helpline in Bijbehara town of Anantnag district in Kashmir.
 
Like Saima, there are forty children with different disabilities are fulfilling their dreams in this school. And the man behind it is Javed Ahmed Tak, 37, a paraplegic.
 
Tak started working for disable rights in Kashmir almost fourteen years back. "My area of focus is disability rights and education. We work in many parts of Kashmir on advocacy of disability rights and empowerment," explains Tak.

Of the many harrowing stories of Kashmiri people, Tak’s story is no different. On March 21st 1997, a bullet hit Tak when some men came to abduct his cousin, who Tak was visiting. "At night, the militants knocked and tried to kidnap my cousin who was attached to local political party. When the family opposed, there was commotion and they fired at me and fled," Tak narrates.

Tak’s life almost stopped that day. He could not pursue his medical education in Iran as he was crippled for life due to 40 per cent spinal damage. After spending a year at the hospital he returned home, only to find his family depressed. To make his family happy he decided to do something. "I told my mother that I will teach kids and in four years I was teaching 90 kids in my house," says Tak.
 
From then on there was no stopping. And today Tak is known both nationally and internationally for his work in the field of disability rights. He went on to do a Masters in Social Work at the Kashmir University and worked on making the campus disable friendly. He won the ninth National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People-Shell Helen Keller award in 2007 and many others for his work.

They have a tie-up with Child Rights and You (CRY) to benefit children. They conduct health check-ups, concentrate on livelihoods development for disabled people, sensitizes common people and government officials on disable rights and runs rehabilitation programmes. "The whole aim of our work is to empower people so that they can lead an independent respectable life," Tak says.
 
While Tak is stubbornly committed towards his work, he says that the government is not doing enough in this area. "There are laws and policies but nothing is being implemented on the ground, as this is a non-priority sector," complains Tak.  "By not paying attention to the needs of the disabled the government is wasting a huge human resource".
 
For Tak there is much that needs to be done. He wants to reach out to more people but thee are constraints. "Because of lack of adequate transport many children are being deprived of education. Parents do not want to go an extra mile for their disabled child. We are now raising funds for another bus," he says.