The hideous footage of a blind child being beaten by the principal of his school in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh last week made me physically sick. This wasn’t just a single slap from a frustrated, OOPS, lost-my-temper grownup. This was repeated, relentless and vicious. This was so driven and purposeful (the man doing it was himself blind!), it had to be supported by another grownup who held the child in place so his tormentor could swing away at him.
As Moy Moy’s mother, this is one of my worst nightmares. What if it were my daughter? What if someone were attacking Moy Moy like that?
But as the Director of the Latika Roy Foundation I can say categorically: this is a crime which should never, ever, have happened.
People are the same everywhere. People are people are people. There are no inherently “good” people and there are none who are intrinsically evil. What there are are systems which make it easy for us to be good and systems which make it easy for us to be evil.
In Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, the system in place allowed an angry, impatient man to take out his feelings of frustration and incompetence on an innocent child. At the Latika Roy Foundation, that simply cannot happen.
Here’s why: Violence is acknowledged as a possible answer to a problem with a child and then it is explicitly rejected. Our policy on non-violence is clear and unambiguous and every staff member signs a pledge accepting that policy.
But it’s not just an airy statement of high-sounding words. It’s a strategy based on the reality of child development – it doesn’t expect behaviour which is not developmentally possible. The child in Kakinada was thrashed for “making noise.” Children, by their nature, “make noise.” Any reasonable policy would understand that.
Our policy is also a set of guidelines which anticipate possible conflicts and offer solutions. A staff member who is feeling overwhelmed or “pushed” by a child’s behaviour has the right (and is to call for help. A child who is “acting out” will be firmly but lovingly restrained so as not to cause harm to herself or to others.
We know that we are walking a tightrope. We talk about it openly. We acknowledge our feelings of frustration when a child’s inner battles emerge and become everyone’s problem. We don’t take it personally. We don’t turn a child’s brave struggle into a power contest or a challenge to our authority.
In Kakinada, it seems, there was no system in place to cope with the inevitable. No one, it seems, had ever mentioned to the principal or the teachers that children are children; that children make noise; that blind children have an extra burden to carry and that teachers are supposed to be there to support them and not to impose their will upon them.
There is no excuse for the brutal scenes from Andhra which we all witnessed on television last week. There is no explanation which can make sense of the ruthless and barbaric way these blind children were treated. But there is also no way to pretend that the same thing isn’t happening in schools across the country. The staff at Kakinada simply had the misfortune to be caught. The same thing is happening all over India. And not only to children with disability. This week also revealed video footage of a furious tutor brutally beating a 3-year old for reasons we can only imagine and we are all aware of examples of corporal punishment in typical schools – perhaps the ones our own children attend.
Sound policy is based on reality. It is based on knowing that human beings are only as good as the systems they exist in and that what we need – more than anything – is to be protected from our own worst selves.
That means that the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights needs to be even more vigilant, even more rigid in enforcing the law for all children – in their own homes, in schools and in institutions. That means that the Boards and the Governing Bodies of such institutions have to take their responsibilities seriously. Their members need to show up regularly to ensure that policies are being implemented in spirit and letter. Trained staff, in adequate numbers, are essential. When we compromise on quality to save money, the results are predictably disastrous.
But most important, and over and over and over, those of us who have chosen to work with children, and particularly children with disability, have to remind ourselves – through our policies and training, through our actions and our daily witness – why we chose this work in the first place: We aren’t here to beat children for making noise or to thrash them into incoherence for defying our authority. We are here to give children a chance. We are here to make a difference in their lives. We are here to make their worlds happier, better, more rewarding.
Nothing less is expected. Nothing less is acceptable. We owe it to the children of Kakinada. Let their suffering be our clarion call. Never again.
