Convicts With a Cause
Babloo Mishra, a postgraduate and Sapan Chakrabarti, a law graduate are serving life sentences for murder in the Bhopal Central Jail. Though convicted, they still have a mission to fulfill. They have been lending out their voices to the visually challenged people so that they can study and lead a better life. For nearly two decades, prisoners at this jail have lent their voices to record textbook lessons on audiocassettes. These cassettes are a great help to blind students as it is often difficult to get hold of books in Braille.
The project was initiated in 1992 by Rohit Trivedi, a teacher at a local college who is visually challenged himself. As there were no NGOs around when he was a student, he had to get his family to do all the recordings for him. Since he had faced a number of problems himself, Rohit decided to provide this facility as an alternative to books for other students and himself became one of the co-founders of Arushi, an NGO devoted to educational activities to support challenged people.
Initially housewives, students and retired people were asked to lend their voices for recordings. The cassettes became an instant hit with the challenged students. However, some of the regular volunteers, like students, who were earlier helping record these cassettes often got busy with their own exams. Therefore volunteers who could devote time regularly were urgently required. Following the overwhelming response, the organization approached the authorities of Bhopal Central Jail to allow the prisoners to record these audio books. The convicted people welcomed the project with a lot of enthusiasm. They are ready to do social work so that their links with society are maintained. They are very sympathetic towards the visually challenged people and believe that such people should be treated with much care and warmth.
What makes this project praiseworthy is the fact that it has not only served the challenged people but has also put in much effort in the process integrating socially marginalized sections like convicted people through a noble cause.
