Mithu Alur

Alur was born Shoma Bose in Calcutta on 27 March 1943. She took a degree in English literature at Miranda House, University of Delhi, in 1963, and in 1968 trained as a teacher in special education at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Her daughter Malini Chib, born in 1966, has cerebral palsy. The absence of any school in India that would admit her led Alur to establish provision of her own.

Alur formally founded The Spastics Society of India on 2 October 1972, and opened the Centre for Special Education at Colaba, Mumbai, on 2 October 1973 — the first school in India for children with cerebral palsy. The organisation was later renamed ADAPT, standing for Able Disabled All People Together.

In 1999 she established the National Resource Centre for Inclusion in Mumbai, which trains teachers and works with mainstream schools to admit and support disabled children. She completed a doctorate in 1998 on the exclusion of disabled children from Indian education policy.

Her publications include Education and Children with Special Needs: From Segregation to Integration (with Seamus Hegarty, 2002), Invisible Children: A Study of Policy Exclusion (2003), The Journey for Inclusive Education in the Indian Sub-Continent (with Michael Bach, 2009) and Inclusive Education Across Cultures: Crossing Boundaries, Sharing Ideas (co-edited with Vianne Timmons, 2009).

Alur was awarded the Padma Shri in 1989. She received the Martha Forrest Rose Quartz Warrior Award in 2003 and a Paul Harris Fellowship from Rotary International in 2006. In 2009 she received the EMPI–Indian Express Indian Innovation Award and the Indian Merchants' Chamber's Woman of the Year award for outstanding woman citizen of Mumbai, and in 2010 the CNN-IBN Super Idol Woman of the Year award.[2][3]