Gujarat's Right to Educational rules not disability friendly: UNESCO

By A Representative
A UNESCO-sponsored report has sharply criticized Gujarat for failing to be disability-friendly towards children aged 5-19. The report says that all state rules for implementing the Right to Education Act, 2006, for instance, "provide for safe transportation to and from school for children with disabilities" with the exception of Gujarat and Uttarakhand.
Prepared by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, "N for Nose: State of the Education Report for India 2019: Children with Disabilities", while commenting on other state RTE rules, the report continues, "Karnataka and Kerala are the only two states whose RTE rules provide for assistive devices and reasonable accommodation."
It says, "While most state rules entrust School Management Committees (SMCs) with the identification and enrolment of children with disabilities, and their participation in and completion of elementary education, they do not necessarily specify representation of their parents or guardians or that of the children themselves wherever student participation is provided for."
It adds, "Except Kerala, none of the state rules refer to special schools for children with disabilities in their RTE rules." Worse, it says, a study of gender gaps of children with disabilities across states reveals that Gujarat is one of the top states having "gender gaps at both secondary and higher secondary levels." Other States are Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra.
The report says, figures for enrolment at secondary and higher secondary levels by gender shows that in Gujarat's Grades IX-X 6,357 are boys and 3,913 girls, and in Grades XI-XII 2,233 are boys and 1,609 girls. Quoting an audit report, it adds, in Gujarat, braille books "were not provided to 9,189 children between 2010 and 2016." Reason? "Approved cost of Braille books was very low in comparison to actual cost, and there was no participation in online tender for Braille books."

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

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Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

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