India has the resources to tackle autism, but we’re not using them

On Hafta 252, Raman Kirpal talked about an autistic child’s parents running around for relevant documentation. It’s a terrifying situation. 

One in every 100 children under 10 in India is autistic. Considering the population, you can get a measure of the total number. While autism isn’t a disease, there is no cure for it yet. The only way to deal with autism is through early intervention – the earlier the better – involving extensive therapy and support to ensure the child gets a fighting chance to be assimilated in society. 

What’s equally terrifying is the growth in the industry claiming miracle cures for autism. Some of them peddle absolute nonsense to gullible parents and family members who are clutching at straws for a miracle cure for their children’s behaviour.

 The Hafta conversation made it evident – no fault of the panel – the understanding of autism is woefully inadequate. But what can you expect when much of the population doesn’t even know what Autism Spectrum is unless they have a near and dear one who has it.

A man from Uttar Pradesh who works as a cleaner in Dubai told me his daughter, more than nine years old, is likely on the Autism Spectrum with speech deficiencies. Yet, he insisted his daughter was all right because she was regularly attending school. The fact she does not speak at all or interact with others is casually brushed away.

The majority of schools and educational institutions even in metropolitan cities in India are ill-equipped, ill-informed, grossly undertrained to handle children with special needs. It is a very tiny percentage of schools in this country that even have a special education department.

One could infer that we just don’t have enough resources and trained people to deal with autistic children. Well, not quite. Heard of “brain drain”? We generally use the term in the context of engineers and researchers leaving India for foreign opportunities. It applies equally to care providers. In Dubai, for one, you will find that the majority of the centres for children with special needs are staffed by Indians. A good many of them are exceptional. But they are only finding jobs outside their own country. It’s not as if these therapists are paid in bucketloads. Far from it. It’s just that job opportunities for such highly trained individuals are so few and far between in India, there aren’t enough incentives for them to stick around. To better contextualise this, Mangalore in India has some of the top educational institutions for people to do bachelors and masters degrees in behavioural sciences, and such access to excellent teaching resources should be celebrated. But even Mangalore has only four centres for therapy that cannot cope with the volume of desperate parents.

So, we may have the people, we may have the calibre, but as a society, we don’t have the collective knowledge, or we just don’t care. We find it easier to call an autistic child – so long as he isn’t ours – mentally retarded.

That’s a sad state of affairs.

If you want to know more about autism and how to detect it, this resource could help. 

Edgar Theodore, a Newslaundry subscriber, lives and works in Dubai, UAE. He is a news junkie and loves to read, especially about technology. He dabbles in writing about issues he feels strongly about.