Mumbai:
Nine-year-old Pranay Shrivastava is a high-functioning autistic child from Pune. He is often referred to as an Autistic Savant as the abilities he demonstrates are far in excess of what is considered normal.
"985x3 is 2955, 985x4 is 3940, 985x5 is 4925," Pranay recites effortlessly. He takes hardly any time to identify the flags of 18 countries.
Pranay may have problems with speech, find comprehension difficult and struggle with obsession and anxiety, his love for math, art and a fantastic memory, sets him apart.
Having extraordinary mathematical and other abilities has not made life easy for Pranay or his family who had to struggle quite a bit to get him admission in a school.
"Most of the times schools told us, 'Sorry we aren't equipped to handle 'such' kids or we have such kids but we have a quota of only two kids and it's already full so why don't you try somewhere else?' So we went from one school to the other and we were politely refused most of the times," Pranay's Father, Prateek Srivastava told NDTV.
The Right to Education Act (RTE) mandates that every child between six to 14 years of age, including disabled children, is given free and compulsory education. Most schools, however, turn them away citing excuses of all kinds.
"A very large number of people, nearly a hundred million suffer from the disability and they still have no representation in Parliament, no constituency and they are depoliticized. They go to schools knocking at doors telling them about the RTE but it is sad that the doors are closed, the classes are full -- so I have suggested that punitive action be taken against them," Dr Mithu Alur, Founder of the Spastic Society of India told NDTV.
While Pranay is a high functional autistic child, many others aren't; they may not be academically bright and may not have an artistic side. Integrating them into the society may seem like a mammoth task but experts say hope still remains.