Heroes We Must Be Proud Of!

Rahul Ramagude plays cricket from a wheelchair. Geeta Chauhan is a wheelchair racer with Olympic aspirations. Siddanth uses technology to enhance movement coordination of intellectually disabled children.

On the International Day of the Disabled, A Ganesh Nadar meets three youngsters making a difference.

Rahul Ramagude, 36, has polio in both legs. An undergraduate, his parents are retired government officials while his younger sister is studying law.

A debilitating fever when he was 18 months old led to polio. He has been playing cricket since he was in Class 4. "I used to play skateboard cricket," he says with a smile.

Since 2017 he has been playing wheelchair cricket and with friends formed the Maharashtra wheelchair cricket team in 2018.

They approached the Mumbai Cricket Association for recognition and were asked to play as the Mumbai wheelchair cricket team. So they changed their name to the Mumbai wheelchair cricket team but neither the MCA nor the cash-rich BCCI gave them any financial assistance.

In 2021 the BCCI formed a committee for disabled cricketers. There are four types of cricket for the differently abled. Blind, deaf, physically challenged and wheelchair. Though it formed a committee the BCCI did not commit any funds.

"We support ourselves," says Rahul with a smile. "We have formed an NGO, the Wheelchair Sports Association. We play and we also collect funds."

Rahul is the treasurer of this association which looks after 70 sportspeople.

These sportspeople play cricket, basketball and tennis at national-level tournaments. They make sure to have a tournament every three months. Their next cricket tournament is in Bengaluru.

Rahul captained the India team wheelchair cricket team from 2017 to 2019. The team played five international tournaments, winning three and losing two.

Geeta Chauhan, 35, lives with her parents and two elder brothers. Two elder sisters are married. She contracted polio after a bout of high fever.

She discovered wheelchair sports only in 2017 and started playing basketball. She has since captained both the Maharashtra and India teams. She is also a wheelchair racer.

She has participated in two national games and won two gold medals and two silver medals in the 400 metres race.

At the Khelo India Games in December 2023 she won gold in the 400 metres and silver in the 100 metres. The medalists were promised Rs 5 lakhs for winning gold and Rs 3 lakhs for winning silver but have not received any money till today.

"My life changed after I started playing wheelchair sports," says Geeta. "Now I have fame, and a goal in life to represent India at the Olympics."

She needs to buy a racing wheelchair which costs Rs 9 lakhs, she says.

Mumbai has four players in the national team and 25 players overall. They have formed the Wheelchair Basketball Association of Maharashtra to support themselves.

Siddanth, a strapping 16 year old in Class 11, captains his school cricket team and plays other games too. His mother Deepti Gubbi is a counsellor for intellectually disabled children and this resulted in him interacting with special children.

He started working on a project for inclusion through technology, wanting to help children with disability.

A motion sensing technology -- Wii -- is attached to video games. Intellectually disabled children have a remote that is connected to the sensor on the screen.

The motion of the child's hand is translated to the player on TV and the children can see their actions replicated on the screen, enabling them to play the game.

Siddhant visits the Jai Vakeel foundation in Sewri, south central Mumbai, twice a week where he teaches five special children.

He records their progress for further study. He notes down their body coordination, ability to imitate, movement cognition which the child understands by affiliation with the game.

His cousin Suhani, who works with him on this project from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, posts their progress on Instagram, helps create presentations and raises funds for the project. She has so far has raised $2,000.

Siddhant and Suhani are part of the 1M1B foundation, which means one million changers for one billion people and have qualified for the UN's Equality for All project.

Siddhant will travel to New York on Monday, December 9, for the next round of the project. If the cousins' presentation impresses the judges, they will make a 3 minute pitch at the UN.