Blind caning the blind: How Media missed the real story about Indian schools

It’s a horrific and shocking story but for the wrong reasons.

Three children, all around ten-years-old, in a school for the visually impaired in Andhra Pradesh, were dragged by their hair, caned, kicked and abused by the principal and another teacher.

And then comes the kicker.

The principal Srinivasulu and the teacher KV Rao are themselves visually impaired as well.

That’s what made it “barbaric” according to media reports. “Blind master sadism” is the headline accompanying the video that shows a stout man in dark glasses thrashing the cowering and wailing child with a cane while another man holds the wriggling child in place.

But the discomfiting question for us is where our outrage stems from.

Is it about the visually impaired, and thus in our eyes “extra helpless” children?

Or do we think how could a man who is himself visually impaired do something so horrible to a likewise impaired child?

Chances are it’s a combination of both. Certainly that was my first reaction and that’s the reason the story has landed up in so many of our newspapers. If the principal had not been visually impaired himself, the outrage would surely have been ten times stronger.

But on second thought this is a story not about disability but about brutal corporal punishment.

The children were not being thrashed because their visual impairment was somehow a source of frustration to their teachers. They were being beaten because according to one report they were making noise and being unruly. Another says they were “indisciplined” and had played outside the school premises. In short they were being beaten mercilessly for being what ten-year-olds often are – naughty.

The outrage should really be about the caning. Our shock about the visual impairment reveals our own blind spot in this matter.

Culture, with the noblest of intentions, through heartstring tugging films like Dosti likes to turn the disabled into saintly figures deserving either of admiration for circumventing all odds or puppy-like helpless creatures evoking tender pity. But disability is a physical trait not an aspect of character. These are real people. There’s no reason a visually impaired child cannot be naughty. There’s no reason why a visually impaired teacher cannot be a total jerk.

If anything this story highlights once again how unsafe and scary our schools can be. These are the places where we entrust our children for hours every day purely based on simple faith in an institution entirely unaware that the skating instructor might be a paedophile until a six-year-old becomes his victim.

In the Vibgyor case it appears that the school’s staff might have unwittingly paved the way for what happened. The six-year-old was punished with isolation in a dark room by an ayah and that’s how the two men found her alone and vulnerable. Citizen Matters reports there had been other instances as well before this one including an alleged molestation of a sixth grader by a swimming teacher. Barely six months before the Vibgyor horror, a six-year-old was molested by a school bus driver.

Even worse, parents allege according to DNA , that they had to sign a declaration saying the school cannot be held responsible for children’s safety in the premises. Citizen Matters reveals a form parents of students at the Treamis World School in Electronic City had to sign that released the school and its sisters concerns from “any and all liability for damage to or loss of personal property, sickness or injury from whatever source, legal entanglements, loss of life or money” that could occur while their child took part in “in various events organised by the Treamis World School which may include field trips, excursions, expeditions, annual camps, sports events etc.”

It is basically enroll your child at your own risk. The school is doing you a favour by accepting the child.

Schools get away with it because the demand for them is so high. And if your child goes to the school for the visually impaired or you cannot afford a fancy school like Vibgyor your options are even more limited. If one parent withdraws her child because she does not want to sign those conditions, there will be three others willing to hope for the best and risk it.

Until it goes horribly horribly wrong and they realize they cannot hold anyone accountable. The buck does not stop anywhere.

There will be demands for background checks on physical instructors and better training of ayahs but that does not address the basic accountability issue.

All these cases, one after the other, show horrible lack of accountability from those in charge when it comes to schools. If the principal at the school for the impaired tries to justify his actions because the children were being too unruly, the powers-that-be at Vibgyor try to wriggle out by saying it might have happened outside the actual school premises. They might say safety of the children is paramount but what seems to be truly paramount is passing the buck.

These are all stories about something gone sickeningly wrong in all these schools and their priorities. And while the visually impaired victims in one might make us extra aghast, we should not let it blind us to the issue at the heart of it all – the safety of children in a school.

After all if it had been a visually impaired teacher beating a sighted child in the same senseless way, that action should be equally heinous, equally shocking and equally sadistic.