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Book Review
Caring for the disabled
NOT LESS THAN YOU: Thomas Felix, K. Govindan Kutty; Samvedana Publications, CIMR, Murinjapalam, Tiruvananthapuram-695011. Rs. 200.
THE LAST decade has witnessed a distinct increase in the visibility of various disabilities affecting mind and body through a plethora of scientific reports and real life stories.
An addition to this is the book by Thomas Felix and Govindan Kutty — the story of an admirable piece of work highlighting the needs of children with mental retardation. Govindan Kutty has ensured that the autobiographical account of Father Felix's life intertwines delicately with the challenges he faced in addressing the needs of the mentally disabled children.
Any work in the non-governmental sector is fraught with multi-faceted challenges in varied spheres of motivation, finance, personnel, support and awareness. Many of these are well depicted in the course of this book.
Starting with the life of Oommachan, whose poignant story obviously was the source of great inspiration to the work of Father Felix, the book describes the strides made by a priest in his crusade to work for this marginalised group of society.
His colleagues in the clergy, politicians, film actors and philanthropists and social workers have all been touched by his determination to succeed and have contributed their mite towards this.
Equipped initially with nothing but a passionate zeal and a heart, which reached out to these children, Felix systematically provided himself with the education, knowledge, training and skills demanded by this kind of work.
Several international agencies came forward to facilitate his exposure to reputed centres in various parts of the world. What was particularly challenging for him was that he had to adapt what he learnt in many state-of-the-art facilities to the harsh realities of the Indian setting.
Many of us are aware that Western models of care, however, brilliant, cannot be transplanted in their entirety to the Indian setting and such adaptation has to be innovative, user friendly, culture sensitive and cost effective.
The book details the several centres and programmes, which evolved over a period of many decades. Some of them are the Association for Rehabilitation of Mentally Retarded Children under the chairmanship of Justice Eradi, Asha Kendra, which later metamorphasised into the Central Institution on MR (CIMR), which is now the nodal agency to impart training in special education and coordinating CBR programmes.
Jeevan Prakash, with its focus on early diagnosis and therapy, drew inspiration and support from Prof. Vojta and Hell Brueggq in Germany. The concept of 3Cs (comprehension, competency, creativity) has been acknowledged as a highly structured system of learning.
The seven steps to totality involve identification of the task of learning, measurement, basic functional development and the culmination of the preceding steps.
A lot of importance is given in these centres to on-the-job training, which equips children to work in the real life situations.
A high premium is placed on the role of sports, music and drama. A large number of people from rural areas of Kerala have been imparted teachers training. A noteworthy supplement of these activities is the establishment of the DCMR, the research wing of these activities.
The easy and rather simple style of writing will probably encourage many workers in this field to go through it. While the authors' recognition of those who helped them with their work is commendable, singling out those who did not could have been avoided. As one working in the field of disability, I enjoyed reading the book not only for its technical content but also for the human stories woven into it.
The reader will be left with no doubt that Father Felix richly deserves all the awards and honours, which have come his way. If such models can be replicated in the country, there would not be many more Oommachans.
R. THARA
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