India has a disabled population roughly equivalent to the population of Great Britain. To be a disabled woman living in the slums is to push at the boundaries of marginalisation, poverty, and powerlessness. For most Indian women, their role in life is set out to be a wife and a mother, but for many disabled women this is culturally not deemed to be possible. They are therefore dependent on their family, often considered a drain on resources, and stigmatised by society. In a survey undertaken by the Association of Women with Disabilities (the organisation for which I am working), only 3% of disabled women in West Bengal have completed secondary education, and in Jharkhand 70% were illiterate. Disabled women are much more likely to face abuse and domestic violence, and they are often subject to verbal and physical harassment on the streets. So not only do these girls have to face the daily trials of living with their impairment, but they are also stigmatised, teased and subject to deeply entrenched prejudices.
By stepping out onto the streets Tabassum and Lakshmi are challenging these endemic stereotypes and negative images, which takes considerable courage. Through their actions daily they are making a powerful statement: ‘my life is worth as much as yours, I can achieve what you can achieve.’
Saturday morning saw me waiting on the edge of a vegetable market in the blazing sun for Pinky, a friendly community worker.
I was to accompany her on her field visits to disabled women. Pinky herself lives in one small room with her parents and two brothers in a slum area, and is orthopaedically impaired. AWWD supports disabled women in the slums through forming self help groups, providing money so girls can continue their education, providing loans so women can start a small business, and teaches them of their rights.It is difficult to find words to describe the living conditions in these slums – ‘Dickensian’ springs to mind. The narrow streets were packed with bustling activity, not too different to the area where I live only slightly more compact and intense, with an intricate criss-crossing of hundreds of electricity wires above us. Each slum is different and has its own character. In this first slum I visited the streets were lined by two and three-storey houses, complete with colourful saris and shalwar kameez hanging out of the windows (and on the electricity wires), damply fluttering in the breeze.
We entered down a narrow alleyway: it was pitch black and smelt of damp: like entering a cave. I felt my way through until I came into a small indoor courtyard, where there was a pump, puddles of water, and chickens clucking around. There seemed to be innumerable small rooms leading off this courtyard, some where whole families were living, and some rooms which were hives of industry. Small boys were making gaudy gold hand bags, and in one room 20 or so young boys looked up at me as I walked past, the room full of colourful bits of material. I wanted to shout out ‘child labour’ in protest, but carried on walking past, my complete inability to do anything to help them starkly apparent. We climbed up some steep, black and narrow stairs, Pinky with some difficulty due to her lame leg. 
At the top was a narrow corridor, and a seemingly constant succession of people appearing out of the blackness, squeezing past me, and disappearing just as suddenly. Outside each room was a small stove: burning hot coals underneath and boiling dal on top. 
Three of us squeezed into the nearest room, two of us sat on the bed which took up 90% of the space, to talk to Saira, a disabled girl. Saira’s sister, mother, and various other interested bystanders stood outside, every so often giving the dal that was bubbling away a stir.It is difficult to imagine how anyone could cope living in these circumstances – in the dark, with six or seven people in a room not much bigger than a small-sized UK bathroom, and with no water or toilet.
But as a disabled girl, Saira must face challenges beyond belief, and not only the indescribable difficulties of daily living. She showed me marks on her leg where she had had successive operations. She also said she didn’t like going outside because of being teased and harassed, but with a smile said she has got more confident since she has been involved with AWWD, and likes going places now.And this was no one-off case. I then met Saeeda, an older lady who had lost her leg in a fire, and who looked at me with dead eyes. Her life was now confined to sitting in the one roomed house, preparing food for the family and comforting innumerable children.
We then visited a family where there were three disabled girls. The first sister we spoke to couldn’t walk at all, was obviously in pain even sitting down, but still greeted us with a beautiful smile. She has had the same operation three times by a bogus doctor as the family could not afford to send her to a properly qualified doctor. We spoke to her sister next, who also had a beautiful smile, and was also disabled. She was all of twenty years old, and had been married for three years. She introduced an eleven year old girl as her daughter: I was initially fairly bemused by this, but she then explained that she was her elder sister’s child, but she had adopted her as her sister could not afford to look after her. 
I don’t know what to write in conclusion. In one way I think I have subconsciously distanced myself from it all, I can’t take in so much suffering all at once. It shouldn’t be like this: so many of the girls are disabled due to poverty – from polio, from accidents, from poor medical treatment, from malnourishment.
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