Education
Lack of Books for Blind Students of Odisha
Things are tough for physically challenged people; this is yet more added-on by the Odisha government as it leaves visually challenged students in trouble. Government adding to trouble? Yeah, for them it so happens!
Are visually challenged students of Odisha not supposed to get educated?
Well, ideally we shouldn’t be asking this question. Yet, why not?
Visual pleasures are not just the only thing that blind students of Odisha miss, what more they are being forced to miss out on is education.
As per the latest reports from PTI, when the world celebrated World Braille Day, visually challenged students in Odisha couldn’t. They had no reason to as face a lack of Braille textbooks and thus are unable to pursue higher studies.
Lipika Rani Pati, a student of Khallikote Cluster University, says, “We are facing problems in the absence of Braille textbooks. A reading assistant too is difficult to get.”
With a lack of Braille textbooks and reading assistants, the students find it tough to remember the entire chapter when being taught in the classes. The students have now requested the government to provide free Braille books for higher studies as well. A further interrogation leads to the information that Odisha as a state has only one Braille press, which published books for uptil Class 8th only.
There also are questions on the state education department regarding reading assistants. As per a recent report, what the staff at Braille Press gets paid is on a par level with a daily wage earner in the state. While the manager gets close to Rs. 5300, an operator is paid around Rs. 3,500. The low package creates a shortage of manpower, which forces the press to hire proof readers to be hired on a daily wage basis at Rs. 120/day.
However, this isn’t something new coming from the state. There have been earlier reports on the lack of Brailler books too.
Well, for that matter … we did tad bit of research. What was found out was pretty shocking for us. There have been similar reports in almost every year ever since 2007. And it wasn’t just limited to books, a few districts of Odisha had no blind schools.
We wonder what has been stopping the education department and the publishers and we’d like to know.