Deaf Indians find opportunity

India’s deaf are finally finding training and employment – and they are reliable employees

Tarquin Hall

Haider Ali is deaf to the words addressed to him by the customer stepping up to the juice bar where he works. Yet his disability does not prove a hindrance to a sale, nor to efficient and courteous service. With a combination of a few simple gestures, a winning smile and a certain amount of pointing at the menu, Ali takes the order and then sets about blending the ingredients of a medium-size “Tropical Crush.” “I’ve never had anyone throw up their hands in frustration because I’m deaf,” says Ali through a signing interpreter after the customer has thanked him with a thumbs-up. “People are very accommodating.”

Increasingly, so are Indian employers. Step into any coffee bar or home-delivery pizza joint in Delhi, the capital of India, these days and there is a good chance you will find yourself having to use rudimentary sign language to indicate the size of your cappuccino or whether or not you want a cheese-filled crust. With chains like Costa Coffee, Domino’s and Joost Juice Bars eager to take on more hearing impaired employees, the likelihood of such interactions looks set to increase.

The main reason: “The attrition rate for deaf employees is much lower,” says Ruma Roka, founder and general secretary of the Noida Deaf Society (NDS). “Having a job for most deaf people in India is nothing short of a miracle.” Such miracles are not achieved overnight, however. Of the 887 deaf men and women whom NDS has so far helped to place in fulltime employment, most, according to Roka and her staff, have endured unhappy and often harrowing childhoods in a society that still perceives deafness as a curse.

“Growing up, they’re told that it’s karma – that they sinned in their past life and so they’re paying the price in this one,” Roka explains from behind her desk in her cramped office in one of Delhi’s eastern suburbs. “Parents will often hide away a deaf child in the home and not let them out during family functions. They usually make the excuse that they’re shy.”

INADEQUATE PUBLIC EDUCATION

Central and state governments have consistently failed India’s 1.2 million deaf citizens as well. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) describes public education for the hearing-impaired in India as “wholly inadequate” and says access to public specialist schools is “extremely limited.” Half of the country’s 540 districts lack a single teacher with specialist training, resulting in the vast majority of deaf children in rural areas being shoehorned into overcrowded, mainstream classrooms. Sign language, which has been mandated worldwide as the natural option for the hearing impaired since, is taught in just eight state-run schools across the entire country.

“Teachers just force deaf students to parrot words they don’t understand from a blackboard,” says Roka. “I’ve heard of many instances when they’ve also advised parents to tie their kids’ hands so they can’t sign. It’s thought that otherwise they won’t learn to speak.”

Haider A li, like thousands of other deaf Indians, reached adulthood with a vocabulary of 40 to 50 words. Communicating anything beyond his most basic needs was beyond him. “I was very angry and frustrated all the time,” he says. “I couldn’t express any of my thoughts or feelings. My parents were like strangers to me.” Learning to sign changed all that. His parents mastered the language, too. At the age of 28, he was finally able to have a conversation with them. “Many times right here in my office I’ve seen parents breaking down when they suddenly hear their child’s voice and understand what they’ve been going through,” says Roka.

The centre, now one of five, offers 18 months of free intensive sign language education followed by employment training. For a first-time visitor, the charity’s building is remarkable for the lack of noise in spite of the considerable amount of activity throughout. In one classroom, a group of students in their early 20s are being taught simple arithmetic. A computer room is packed with mature students learning to use spreadsheets and basic digital animation software. In the basement, classes are also under way in “ethics” and “life skills.”

The miracle of having a job: education is transforming lives across India

A WIN-WIN SITUATION

“We also have to do a lot of confidence-building,” says one teacher, herself deaf. “We don’t always succeed. Some students have gone through too much trauma. But usually we can find a way to get through to them.” Roka has devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to educating employers as well. Initially, the companies she approached were only inclined to offer deaf people menial tasks. But she insisted that her graduates were capable of carrying out clerical, “non-voice” jobs in banks, retail and the IT industry.

The low attrition rate argument proved a persuasive incentive for Delhi-based FIS Global Business Solutions, which processes financial data for banking customers in the United States. Some 95% of deaf employees in the Indian IT industry stick to their jobs long term, compared to as few as 40% of hearing ones.

According to the head of the company’s employee relations, Manpreet Singh, the two deaf data processors the company took on eight months ago have surpassed expectations. Concentration is vital in an industry where one wrong keystroke can send money to the wrong bank account, he points out, and Vipin Kumar, 28, and Alok Sagar, 25, are not distracted by office chit-chat. “In organizations like ours, you are evaluated every day. And one single day, if it goes wrong, you would tend to lose your job,” he says. “[Vipin and Alok] are extremely hardworking. From a longevity perspective, from a retention perspective, it’s a win-win situation for us.”

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MARKETPLACE

The International Labour Organization could not agree more. A recent study conducted by its Conditions of Work and Equality Department using data from 10 countries in Asia and Africa concluded that the economic cost of not employing persons with disabilities was as much as 7%. That figure is an estimate, stresses Barbara Murray, senior disability specialist at the ILO. But it illustrates how developing education and employment opportunities for the world’s disabled, in particular deaf people whose disability may be less restrictive than others, is economically advantageous, not to mention morally just.

“The people with hearing impairment are generally at a disadvantage because they’re not put through the mainstream education system, so all too often employers assume that their working capacity is low due to their impairment, whereas it’s really due to their lack of education,” says Murray. “If they can attend top-notch training that’s relevant to the opportunities that are available, there’s no reason why they can’t compete in the labor market.”

Worldwide, companies are recognizing this to be the case, she adds. Yet the labor force participation rate of persons with disabilities in OECD countries stands at just 48%, and state benefits systems are often an incentive not to work, according to the ILO. Deaf people in India face no such dilemma. Individual subsidies amount to no more than $9 per month. Haider Ali, by contrast, earns $150 working at the juice bar – enough to support a wife, who is also deaf, and his hearing two-year-old son.

Still, for the 27,000 deaf children born every year in India and the hundreds of others without access to education, the curse has yet to be lifted. Ruma Roka says that hardly a day goes by without one or two young deaf people turning up at her door, desperate for a future. “Many come from remote areas and often travel on their own, without being able to ask for simple directions,” she says. “They show incredible initiative and determination, often a lot more than the hearing people I know. But it’s a terrible failing on the part of society, that they’re put in such a position.”

Deaf Indians find opportunity

India’s deaf are finally finding training and employment – and they are reliable employees

Tarquin Hall

Deaf Indians find opportunity

India’s deaf are finally finding training and employment – and they are reliable employees

Tarquin Hall

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