About three million children are affected by autism in India, says report. This means almost one out of every 60 child is affected.
In the effort to not only find a cure but to integrate autistic kids into maintream society, Nilanjan Bhowal organised an annual charity fundraiser art show for a non-profit foundation Udaan.
The participating artists for the cause were Anjali Ela Menon, Ashok Dilwali, Farhad Husain, Jai Zharotia, Jagannath Panda, Jogen Chowdhary, Manisha Parekh, K.S. Radhakrishnan, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Madhvi Parekh, Manu Parekh, Paresh Maity, P.R. Daroz, Rajeev Lochan, Raghu Rai, Jayashree Burman, G.R.Irana, Puja Irana, Raghu Rai, Kanchan Chandra, Jogen Chaudhary, Veer Munshi, Alex Davis, Mukkul Goyal, Rameshwar Broota, Sakti Burman, Vibhor Sogani, Veer Munshi and Yuriko Lochan.
On Niranjan’s inspiration for the exhibition and the cause, he says, “There is no goverment grant for this section. There’s a lot of work being done for differently-abled children. But nothing has been done for the sevierely disabled children.”
He adds the inspiration worked over the years owing to great results from such initiatives.
He then details the challenges he faced in organising the exhibition. He explains that the first time he organised such an event, it took him approximately six months to organise it. “Though I knew most of the artists personally, the problem was that we were doing it for the first time,” he says.
This time he is upbeat about the fact that more people have now come on board and not only artists but people from other domains as well.
On being asked if what has been done for autisic children is enough or not, he says it is just one of the stepping stones and adds, “Over here we organise capacity building sessions for parents. The main problem is parents of disabled children need a lot of counselling to include their children to maintream society without any hesitation.”
He concludes the conversation by saying that an early intervention in the case of autism is necessary in order to get better results. It is often seen with early intervention, a child can recover.
