*
Social Inclusion of Disabled People in India – A Case
of Mirakle Courier, Mumbai
Mirakle Courier, Mumbai[1]
Mirakle
Couriers is a courier agency that provides employment for the hearing impaired.
We can see them in orange coloured t-shirt having logo of Mirakle Courier on
the road of Mumbai City. Mirakle Courier is the only privately run, for profit
organization in India that employs only hearing impaired people. The company
hired men and women from underprivileged part of the city train them and deploy
them for courier service. Salary given to employees is competing to same
industry. For this work company has been awarded the National Award for the
Empowerment of People with Disabilities by the Ministry of Social Justice,
Government of India in the year 2010. It has also won the Hellen Keller Award,
Echoing Green Fellowship in the year 2009. The award is given to outstanding
employers of person with disabilities as well as the most outstanding employees
with disabilities.
Many
of us see the person with disabilities a helps less guy. What they can do in
these types of situations? How they can stand their own feet? But these issues
can be resolved by providing better opportunities to them. We can create an
inclusive environment for them. Mirakle Courier is exactly doing this by
involving person with disabilities. Being a private company it was difficult
task for the company to work on this business model but the company did it.
“In
India people with different abilities have been discouraged for a long time; as
a result of this discrimination, there is a strong sense in their minds that
they are not capable of anything. I am just using the word ‘they' for
reference, we are one team and there are no differences,” says Dhruv Lakra, Founder
of Mirakle Couriers. On the website of the company it is written that “We are not a charity and do not help deaf
people, we merely help them help themselves. Most of them have grown up in an
over-protected environment or have been badly treated for being physically
different. We believe that to overcome this we must help bring out their true
inner potential. We do this by employing them in a highly competitive and
professionally demanding courier business where we push them to rise up to the
occasion. By working with us they gain copious levels of confidence while also
gaining financial independence. The result is that many of them are able to go
back home and support their families rather
than having to be helplessly dependent on them.”[2]
According
to Rohan Mehta, Marketing & Media person at Mirakle, “Deafness is invisible
disability. People who are deaf can read, write and see so a courier company
was a good idea as it does not require much speaking. Besides, the deaf have an excellent visual
sense. They are very good at remembering roads, building and even faces, which
is a good skill to have in the courier business.”[3]
|
“We have
maintained a zero-defect record.
No packet has
been delivered to a wrong address, so far.”
Dhruv Lakra,
Founder and CEO, Mirakle Couriers
|
Lakra
clearly mentions that the company is full for profit organization so that they
can be independent for their operation and they will not have to bank upon any
donation. Private sector must realize that it has a responsibility towards
people with disabilities. But more than that, there are disabilities that do
not prevent person having them from working in the mainstream. If the corporate
sector recognizes this, many more people will find a better means livelihood. If
the private sector is given incentives to hire persons with disabilities, it
might help the situation in India, Lakra suggests. He points out that the
corporate sector in the United States and in several European countries have
clear policies – such as tax benefits – for hiring the disabled. The Indian
government needs to adopt such strategies, he feels.
Origin
of Mirakle Courier….
Mirakle
Couriers was founded in January 2009. Started by Dhruv Lakra who combined his
education and experience in both the business and social sectors to come up with
a for-profit social enterprise. The idea to help the deaf was triggered by one
particular incident he experienced while traveling on a bus in Mumbai.
Once
upon a time, Dhruv was sitting on a bus next to a young boy looking eagerly out
the window. In fact he was not just eager but actually being very restless. He
was looking around anxiously, seeming slightly lost. Dhruv asked him where he
was going but the boy did not respond. It took him a few seconds to realize
that this boy was unable to hear or speak. He was deaf. Though the bus
conductor regularly announced the stops this boy still did not know where he
was. Dhruv took out a piece of paper and wrote to him in Hindi asking him where
he was going. Through the back and forth pen and paper exchange, it suddenly
dawned on Dhruv how difficult life was for the deaf. Something as
straightforward as a bus became a struggle.
It
is an invisible disability. You can not know when someone near you is deaf as
there are no obvious physical attributes, and so it is totally ignored. It is
also a silent (voiceless) disability. There is very little public sympathy for
the deaf, and by connection, a severe lack of government support for them in
India. Particularly when it comes to employment there are no opportunities because
no one has the patience or the foresight to learn deaf language and
culture. This is how Mirakle Couriers was born.
Over
the next few months Dhruv spent time exploring the deaf culture and learning
Indian Sign Language. He focused on a courier business because it requires a
lot of visual skills but no verbal communication. The deaf are extremely good
at maps reading, remembering roads and buildings because they are so visually
inclined.
Over
the last two years Mirakle Couriers has grown to operate in 2 Branches in the
city, employing 70 deaf employees and delivering over 65,000 shipments per
month. While the men work in the field, the women operate the computers. The
company hopes to train the men to take up supervisory and managerial positions
as well.
Lakra
says it has not been easy convincing companies to give his firm business.
“Corporates are reluctant to hire us as they are scared that parcels may not
reach the destination or that we do not have adequate capabilities to handle
important documents,” he says. “Furthermore, courier services are a ruthless
business. However, we are good at what we do and have landed some big clients
like Vodafone, Aditya Birla, Godrej and Boyce, and that has been extremely
beneficial. As companies begin to realise their corporate social
responsibility, they may show more interest in hiring us.”
Mirakle
has carefully worked on its operations and has fine-tuned logistics to provide
a well-oiled and error-free system. Lakra says this was necessary because the
work was to be carried out by persons with disabilities. Text messages on the
mobile phone have been an extremely useful tool in their work. Yet there are
problems that occasionally mar his employees' confidence – such as not finding
an address or run-ins with rude, insensitive watchmen or receptionists. Now the
more experienced boys know how to handle these situations, he says.[4]
Company
also trains them to reach certain level so that they can be treated badly for
any mistakes. Company also conducts reading writing workshops for them. In the
begging Mirakle courier approached the school of hearing impaired to recruit
staff. But for last couple of years person comes to Mirakle for jobs.
Final Note !!
As
we know that Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India is
doing remarkable job for upliftment of the disabled persons in India by
establishing different types of autonomous organizations engaged in achieving
various types of objectives regarding disability. It is not only government’s
duty to help the disabled but also of the society to participate in this
journey of upliftment. Some of the organizations have been excellent examples
by showing their path breaking work as we show in the chapter on role of society
in development of disabled individual.
We
have to think about the inclusive growth of the disabled person not just by
providing them basic facility like food, shelter etc. but we also have to work
upon the overall growth of those people. We have to make them self-reliant and
independent. I always remember one quote given by Confucius, a Chinese
Philosopher “Give a man a fish, you feed
him for a day. Teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime”. In our case
it means that we have to create job opportunities for these people so that they
can be self-made. Government is performing its duty at its own pace but as a
citizen of India one should come forward to take care of this segment of the
society which is often neglected by us.
[2] [2] Anupama Katakam, “A
courier company in Mumbai shows the way in providing employment for the hearing
impaired.” Frontline, Volume
28, Issue 03, Jan 29-Feb 11,2011 available at http://www.frontline.in/fl2803/stories/20110211280308500.htm
accessed July 20, 2012
[3] ibid
No comments:
Post a Comment