tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90021105256061391382024-03-13T04:41:49.614-07:00Different StrokesDon Quixote tilting against windmills on the long-suffering Rosinante,
trying to save damsels in distress from imaginary ogres; or me jousting
with an exclusive environment on my battered wheelchair to try and give
people with disabilities a fighting chance. Who is crazier?V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.comBlogger183125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-46304696337932699542019-08-12T03:24:00.000-07:002019-08-19T22:31:24.501-07:00A rose by some name(s) can stink<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is something that has really made my blood boil every time I hear it. But I am getting ahead of myself. I should let my temper rise slowly. If my parents have decided to call me by some name, that does not mean somebody I hardly know from Adam can walk up to me and say `from now, you will be called by this other name by which I christen you'. You can only wonder at the possible outcome of walking up to a religious fundamentalist called Ram, say, and telling him he will henceforth be called Mohammed.<br />
<br />
If I seem childish and silly, bear with me. I am merely trying to get the reader primed to the same level of justifiable wrath as a group of people who have harmed nobody but are being subjected to callous mockery by the political `leader' of their country. The group of people I am alluding to are my fellow Indians who have the misfortune, like me, of having a disability. Such people have their own culture. For various reasons I do not have to elaborate here, we like to be referred to as `persons with disabilities' (or simply PWD). But our rulers in Delhi have never stopped trying to find a name which they feel more comfortable with: thus `specially abled', `differently abled', and several variants thereof. Why, for God's sake, should you be comfortable with what people call me? Do we not have a say in what we are called?<br />
<br />
The biggest culprit in this name-calling is our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. One fine day, in one of his rare speeches to the media on PWDs, he came up with the word `Divyang' for disabled, and before you knew what was happening, official statements from Delhi had started using the term `Divyangjan' for PWD, e.g., in the Hindi version of `Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment'. Though almost all groups of PWD have uniformly voiced their dislike for this term being thrust on them, the Govt. has officially told the UN that <i>in India, PwDs are addressed as ‘Divyangjan’ in Hindi and other Indian languages like Gujarati, Telugu etc. This term is used in the local dialects of the Act and Rules thereunder including in Hindi. ‘Divyangjan’ does not accurately reflect its literal English translation as persons with divine organs. It actually means persons with divine powers. The ‘persons with disabilities’ community at large has welcomed it and is very appreciative of this term attributed to them. Therefore, the word ‘Divyangjan’ cannot be termed as derogatory to persons with disabilities. Nonetheless, the phrase ‘persons with disabilities’ is still in use in English.</i> This selective presumption of parental prerogative to re-name one set of one's children, and in spite of this new name not being well-received by the more outspoken of those who have been re-christened thus, to claim that everybody is happy with their new name, is sheer and unmitigated gall, and only to be expected from a Govt. led by a party with an avowedly exclusive mindset of wanting an India for Hindus only!</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-4130192403200981762019-05-05T05:19:00.000-07:002019-05-05T05:38:31.695-07:00What if ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last week, Sachin, a young journalist from Business Standard, contacted Disability Rights Alliance (DRA) to talk to a preferably Person with Disability (PWD) member on how the big hype in the press, over the recent elections being rendered disabled friendly, measured up against the ground reality. Going by Business Standard’s desire to seek their opinion, the advocacy of the rights of PWD by DRA is apparently credible. And I am understandably proud to be a member of DRA, in fact the member who was deputed to talk to Sachin. I enjoyed describing many of the glaring lapses that exposed wilful deceit or inaccuracy in the media’s hype on current levels of disabled-friendliness; classic examples may be found in<br />
<a href="https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/cover-story/spot-checking-mumbais-disability-friendliness/articleshow/69152762.cms">https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/cover-story/spot-checking-mumbais-disability-friendliness/articleshow/69152762.cms</a> or in <b><i>Fifth of polling stations not friendly to disabled</i></b>, <i>Mumbai TOI April 29 2019</i> <i>(</i>the lack of disabled-friendliness alluding usually to the booths being on the first or second floors of buildings without elevators)! The make-shift ramps at booths in Chennai visited by members of DRA were so steep that independent use by wheelchair users was quite dangerous and scary. As for availability of disabled-friendly toilets, we are talking about India! (For the ultimate oxymoron, see my blogpost on an upmarket hospital in Chennai without ANY disabled-friendly toilet at <a href="https://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2019/03/my-recurring-nightmare-but-in-real-time.html">https://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2019/03/my-recurring-nightmare-but-in-real-time.html.</a> After talking to me, on my experience of voting in Chennai last month he wrote a piece (in Business Standard) on how one wheel-chair using mathematician (me) viewed the ground reality of going to vote this year in Chennai. (This had been possible only due to the resourcefulness of my driver!) <br />
<br />
More interestingly, as I found out only later, Sachin was asking the pertinent question, of whether making the entire election process more accessible to PWD and thereby more inclusive, might affect the outcome of the election. The simple arithmetic he proposed was to compare typical margins between winning and losing in our elections, with the proportion of the electorate who were PWD and would be able to cast their vote if the electoral process were to be truly barrier-free and accessible. For instance, the typical difference between winning and losing in our elections is about 15%, while about 20% of voters who are PWD will benefit from the entire election process being made barrier-free. I would say this to Sachin: IF every PWD (in fact any person with some sensitivity) were to see a video of PM Modi making `jokes’ of very dubious taste about people afflicted with dyslexia that was (a) on social media a few weeks back, (b) and deleted rather quickly after many people commented on how shameful and in poor taste it was for the PM of `the biggest democracy’ to mock her citizens who were dyslexic, (c) but thankfully not deleted before it was preserved on Twitter (see @RoshanKrRoy) making it possible for anyone who so desired to reload and see the video; THEN it is almost sure that (s)he would decide to vote for anybody but Modi, thereby giving more credibility to Sachin’s conjecture.</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-27895925022107563552019-03-26T21:40:00.000-07:002019-04-27T22:48:17.386-07:00My recurring nightmare - but in real time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let me show you one of the typical contradictions that India keeps coming up with, at an astonishing rate. On the one hand, Chennai <i>nee </i>Madras prides itself on being the capital of medical tourism. And one of its more elite hospitals is Malar hospital on the bank of Adyar River. As my luck would have it, my wife has had to be hurriedly admitted at the emergency ward, the reason for our returning again, and again, and again, <i>ad nauseum, </i>to Malar, being that the doctors that she has had to consult have had affiliations with that hospital. Now for my gripes against Malar Hospital, let me slowly lead up to the prime contradiction in this hospital. I must tell you that I use a battery powered wheelchair in the naive hope that this will make me independent. Almost every door in this hospital comes equipped with one of those self-locking devices, which you should know is one of the prime reasons for rendering any building highly barrier-</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ridden</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> and disabled-unfriendly. So my always low threshold for difficult environs was already simmering and ready to erupt as my search for a disabled-friendly toilet continued. The first two toilets I was led to were disqualified from fitting the requirements of being disabled-friendly because of a step at the entrance and of having stalls too small for manoeuvring a wheel-chair. At the sight of my face being dangerously close to apoplectic, the nurse, who had suggested those two toilets said the toilets of the desired sort were to be found on some other floor and quickly took herself far from the elevator! And when I got to the mentioned floor, I found that the toilets there were also rendered unfriendly by the ever-present step at the entrance to the toilet.A little more enquiry led to the amazing fact (at least as far as anybody there could tell) that <i style="font-weight: bold;">Malar hospital does not have a single disabled-friendly toilet! </i>I wonder if any of <i>those medical tourism booklets </i>mention this amazing fact.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Still simmering and seething from the amazing gall of the above fact, I felt that nothing could amaze me any more about this hospital. But Malar was always ready with yet another no-brainer for you to chew on! Whenever a patient is admitted to this hospital (or to several others of its ilk), she has to have an attendant (who will have to make periodic visits to the pharmacy to keep replenishing the stock of pills that have been consumed since the last such visit to the local pharmacy, or pay some bills in one of the administrative offices which are woefully ill-equipped to accommodate a wheelchair user in their narrow corridors). But those corridors are luxuriously spacious in comparison with the bedroom the patient has to share with the attendant. The pokey little space reserved for the attendant can only be reached after making a couple of tight 90 degree turns around the hospital bed after carefully bypassing all the gizmos attached to the bed. As for turning the wheel chair around so you can get back out of the room, the paucity of space around the bed makes that impossible unless you have a brawny person in the room who can manually accomplish this. And you should have the presence of mind to stop every hospital hand visiting the patient from automatically clicking on the locking device on her way out. And if you wanted to call some nurse from their waiting room, that door - just like every other door from the patient's room to the nurses' lounge - will also have this gizmo trying to prevent you from pulling it open! I have a long list of no-no's for a potential access audit of this hospital. It has an enormously long list of goofs to be rectified before it can claim to be accessible. When I was sweetly asked for my comments about our experience at Malar, I said I had a whole essay to contribute on the topic, which I intended to publicise in my blog one day! This is that day; and every dog has its day! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-4204940124005649422018-10-11T03:56:00.000-07:002018-10-11T03:56:28.786-07:00The 3 E's for emancipation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Georgia; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000}
p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Georgia; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 16.0px}
span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
</style>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Analogous to the so-called 3 R's of learning, I'd like to propose three E's for </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">emancipation of a group of people who have been denied rights that others assume are `entitlements' of all people: education, employment, and </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">entertainment. Before elaborating on the state of access of these Three E's to the PwD of India, let me begin by recalling that Section 1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) states that the purpose of the Bill is </span><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity</i></b><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>Education:</i></b><span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A professor of mathematics famed for his pithy pronouncements like `a picture is worth a thousand words' once said that `a measure of the civilisation of a country is the cleanliness of its toilets'. By his metric, the state of our civilisation is somewhere between non-existent and repulsively barbaric. Most children who have the privilege of attending schools (all of whose toilets are invariably dirty and stink), strain their will powers and bodies every school-day in order to not have to use the toilet all day till they return home. Imagine the plight of those whose bladders will not allow them this possibility (a not uncommon condition associated with various forms of disability). In a typical school in India, a child with locomotor problems will not have a wheelchair and will need to crawl to the toilet on a path that gets increasingly unclean - talk of `respect for one's inherent dignity’! And you can be sure that typical school will have no ramps or elevators, and several classrooms can be accessed only after negotiating one or more flights of stairs.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And colleges might only be slightly better, if that! A friend of mine who taught at the `prestigious' IIT in Mumbai told me that during every class he taught in a certain course in a certain room one semester, he would see the same boy being carried up the steps by the same friend! (I must admiit that, recently, another friend in the math faculty there proudly told me that every classroom in their department could now be reached by an elevator!</span><span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><i>Employment:</i></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Most employers would instinctively consider somebody with a discernible disability like cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome to be unsuitable as a prospective employee. At the other extreme, there are organisations like Cafe Coffee Day and Lemon Tree Hotels which predominantly hire people with a hearing impediment and Down Syndrome respectively. While the latter practise is laudable CSR, that </span>is the <span class="s1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">kind of thinking that promotes special schools for people with specific disabilities, whereas all schools (establishments) in an ideal world would be non-discriminating and fully inclusive. Are there special schools for left-handed people or people who wear glasses? This is not to say there should not be concessions for people with special needs like ramps and elevators or reserved parking lots for vehicles of people with special needs. But such concessions will not work in an unthinking society such as ours, where it is the rule rather than the exception for an inconsiderate populace to</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> park vehicles in a manner that blocks access for a wheelchair to a ramp or park without batting an eyelid in a slot reserved for disabled people even when everybody in the car is completely able. Our Govt. tables a law whereby a percentage of jobs are reserved for specially abled but subject to peculiar criteria: for instance, a telephone operator’s job could be your’s provided you had only one leg or arm AND the job had not been given to so many such people as to have exhausted that quota. The first step to inclusivity is to embrace diversity as a virtue rather than regard PwD as freaks!</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><i>Entertainment:</i></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Surely, going to a play, movie, concert or a visit to the beach or going for a swim would all in qualify as enjoyment of one’s human right and fundamental freedom, but all these forms of diversion are denied to one who is constrained to a wheelchair. For another example, take dining out. More or less the only accessible restaurants are in five-star hotels, and those blow a big hole in your pocket. The same thing holds for `having a beer with the gang after a lecture’ (an integral part of academic life in many western countries).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> The web-sites of stand alone restaurants are delightfully uninformative about their state of accessibility. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Zomato took the trouble to state that some restaurants are wheelchair accessible - until I found that the only path to one such restaurant had two six inch steps. So, like the rest of India, `only a few steps' also qualifies as accessible for Zomato!</span></span></div>
<br /></div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-63794828139600502022018-09-04T19:12:00.000-07:002018-09-04T19:12:17.338-07:00The route to learning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120% }
</style>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">(</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">A
tip for</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> the reader </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">who
does not have the time to read</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">
this </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">entire </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">piece
: the three passages highlighted in bold italic
font </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">contain its essence</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">.)</span></i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My
life has been spent learning a complicated subject; and later, after
having learnt some of the complex nuances of the subject, trying to
disseminate what I have learnt to others who know even less about it
than I do. And I have been through this cycle at least twice, with
mathematics the first time, and then with disability awareness. And
this is an attempt to distill what I believe is one key ingredient to
making some headway in this business of learning, and to explain this
by examples from both the careers I have embarked on:</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>Once
you have a vague idea of the subject and a minimal maturity to
identify the closest to a master of this subject that you have access
to, get this master to guide you up the path you should follow to
reach the desired goal. </b></i></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">First
the math examples. The teacher (K.M. Das) of my favourite course
during my M.Sc. used a beautifully written text book and helped me
to pursue my doctoral studies under the guidance of the author (P.R.
Halmos) of the afore-mentioned book. It so happens that when Halmos
finished <i>his</i> Ph.D., he went to the prestigious Institute
for Advanced Study at Princeton, although without any financial
support. This IAS had only about 5 permanent faculty – Einstein,
Godel, Veblen, von Neumann and such undoubted masters of their craft.
von Neumann later offered Halmos a fellowship, on seeing the
meticulous notes the latter was taking of the former’s legendary
series of lectures on what he termed <i>Rings of Operators </i>and
what the whole world now calls <i>von Neumann algebras.
</i>(Incidentally, these algebras yield the mathematical backdrop for
Quantum Mechanics, and have been my area of specialisation for the
past thirty years!)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And
now to my `second career’. As explained elsewhere, when I `came
down’ with Multiple Sclerosis and realised that the system in India
was not going to make any allowances for Persons with Disability
(PwD), I embarked on my own campaign to try and sensitise people on
the plight/rights of PwD. My initial sortie on this campaign was to
write a bi-monthly column in the Times of India. An initially
sympathetic Edtor gave my column a boost by putting ii up on the
Op.-Ed. Page. This happy state of affairs lasted just a bit more than
a year – until he had to cede the Op-Ed. Spot to others on his
Editorial Board who had been wanting it for `more newsy items’.
During that year, a large number of my readers convinced me that
much more needed to be done. Rather than accepting his offer to publish my `column' in their e-paper, I chose instead to write my own blog where I could decide the length of posts and their frequency. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">A
fortuitous set of circumstances led to my meeting a couple of masters
of disability activism, Rahul Cherian and Vaishnavi Jayakumar.
Although I did meet Rahul several times after that, I never had the
pleasure of espousing any specific issue alongside him before a cruel
stroke of Fate ended his life prematurely. I have written more on
Rahul and that epochal meeting elsewhere in my blog – at
http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-giant-among-men.html.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I
have been more fortunate with Vaishnavi, We have been on several
campaigns espoused by the `Disability Rights Alliance’ (DRA), a
group without any hierarchy, of people whose one common trait is a
passion to fight for the rights of PwD. As I periodically bemoan in
my blog, DRA has been repeatedly offering their combined expertise
and their desire to work with with the Govt. before they hurriedly
put up something which needs to be retro-fitted to account for
erroneous construction – eg., the CMRL (which is yet another form
of public transport which is unusable by people who use wheelchairs
or are blind and might have the silly idea that they might travel
alone), or the Museum Complex (where the tactile tiling employed
would have led to some accidents for blind people if we had not got
the engineers to let us do an access audit before they completed
their accessification exercise).</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Vaishnavi
is a master at setting up such hierarchy-free organisations as DRA.</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">She
is probably best known for co-founding The Banyan. After branching
out from the Banyan, she has espoused the causes of people afflicted
by various forms of disability. It did not take much time for me to
realise that she was a walking encyclopedia when it came to the
problems faced by PwD, and clearly the master from whom to learn the
ropes – various sign languages employed by people with hearing
disability, enabling blind people to access the computer,
specifications of international standards for ramps, hand-rails,
disabled friendly toilets, do’s and dont’s in accepted etiquette
when dealing with people with autism, the special requirements of
people with multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy… Recently she
informed us that the Disability Commissioner of Tamil Nadu has
changed from V. Arun Roy to B. Maheswari. It occurred to me that</span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>
both the lot of the Tamil PwD and Ms. Maheswari’s tenure, in her
new posting </b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>as </b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>Disability Commissioner of
Tamil Nadu, will stand to gain considerably from her meeting
Vaishnavi and talking to her for about an hour </b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>on </b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>the
various </b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>faces of </b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b>disability and DRA’s
work.</b></i><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><b> </b></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">For, as Halmos demonstrated, it would be
a case of looking a gift horse in the mouth to not use the fact that
you are in the vicinity of a von Neumann.</span></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Continuing
this contorted analogy further, ground-breaking as his work on von
Neumann algebras was, the man moved on to other things with even more
fundamental consequences, such as the then newly emerging theory
behind, and building of, the computer. Likewise, having seen The
Banyan and DRA to a reasonably functional level – not to mention
informing Arun Jaitley some basic facts about GST and their
implications for PwD - the subject of Vaishnavi’s latest attentions
caught her eye at (least as early as) the Chennai floods a few years
ago, and during the current events in Kerala. Let me quote her on
this latest foray, which is as relevant to the regularity of
impending climate change induced natural disasters as computers are
to current lifestyle.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>A
bunch of us have got together as a collective informal group called
AIDER that will focus on the specific and yet oft-forgotten needs of
disabled people before, during and after disasters. </i></span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Based
on the Kerala government's list of emergency relief requirements for
disabled citizens, Team AIDER has apart from directly contacting
groups (to make their giving of aid more representative), released a
Disaster Relief Registry where focussed contributions can be made
with ease by individuals online based on the list of emergency
requirements. The item will be delivered direct to the state nodal
agency, The Kerala Social Security Mission who will distribute it
according to urgent requirements they'd earlier mapped.</i></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Time
to #AbilifyKerala with AID for Assistive Aids ...</i></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Visit
www.bit.ly/abilify-kerala to ensure that no one gets left behind.</i></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>#DIDRR
#KeralaFloods2028 </i></span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Finally,
trying to follow in her footsteps,</span></span><i><b> may I take
this opportunity to request the CM of Kerala to apportion at least 3%
of the sum collected in his relief fund only for the purpose of
helping the PwD affected by the rains?</b></i></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120% }
</style>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-64618185759751544562018-08-09T19:10:00.000-07:002018-08-25T23:06:09.732-07:00On the proposed rise of the HECI from the ashes of the UGC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The future of our children is under grave threat if the current Govt. of our country has its way and passes this draft `HECI Act' which will hand over the control of their education from our academics to our bureaucrats. This draft Act reads more like a set of procedures required to be followed for changing your name which has been mis-spelt in your passport (almost surely due to some clerical error), than like anything that has to do with education. As it stands, the `Commission' is capable of and authorised to giving higher priority to include `fuzzy logic' than `free probability' as an elective course! (This jargon is merely to underline the fact that many people, who may not even know the meanings of these terms, might well be making such horrific decisions while framing the syllabus for advanced courses!)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As for the constitution of this commission:</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Article 3(3) says <i>The Commission shall consist of a Chairperson, Vice Chairperson and twelve other Members to be appointed by the Central Government. The Secretary of the Commission will act as the Member-Secretary<a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="sdendnote1anc" style="font-size: 9.119999885559082px;"><sup>i</sup></a></i>.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Article</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3(5) says <i>The Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and Members shall be scholars being persons of eminence and standing in the field of academics and research possessing leadership abilities, proven capacity for institution building, governance of institutions of higher learning and research and deep understanding on issues of higher education policy and practice</i>.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Article</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3(8) shows that only 2 members need to be <i>serving Professors of Universities, reputed for research and knowle</i><i>dge creation.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I seriously doubt the existence of 12 people who would satisfy conditions 3(3), 3(5) and 3(8) of the draft Act, and be likely to be hired as faculty at institutes of excellence like IIT(Bombay) or IISc purely on the basis of their academic credentials.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">further ingenious </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">feature of this HECI is </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the requirement of </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">yearly </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">evaluation of </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">academic performance </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">of the HEIs </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">no doubt </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">o</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">n a doc file in a prescribed proforma</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">).</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">T</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">he preparation of </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">necessary reports </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">will eat into the precious little time available to faculty for research. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As it is, faculty at HEIs spend </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">increasing amounts of their </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">time </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">filing reports rather than doing research!</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">This suggestion/<i>fait accompli </i>is yet another instance of our govt.’s strategy of giving a new name to an existing concept or scheme, and not really doing anything later with it, except pointing to the creation of this scheme as one of their achievements. Disability activists are familiar with PWD being re-christened <i>Divyangjan</i>, Accessible India Campaign becoming <i>Sugamya Bharat Abhiya</i><i>n ...</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">I, for one, am totally opposed to this proposed `draft act'. As the Tamil saying goes, leaving education in the care of our babus is like a case of `korangu kaila poo malai' (ie, a flower garland in the hands of a monkey).</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Already this govt. has changed the existing method, of direct payment of the paltry wages `paid' to research students in elite institutions, to their favourite toy, the Aadhar </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">route</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">(resulting in the monthly stipend typically coming in several months late!). The tension to which our young research scholars are being subjected is in stark contrast to the enthusiasm with which several of our aspiring scientists joined the</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">March for Science </b><b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">held in major cities of India </b><b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">on April 14</b><sup style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>th</b></sup><b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, 2018.</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">It may not be out of place here to quote from the appeal made by the organisers of those marches:</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><i>In India the concerted efforts by some interest groups to undermine science continues unabated. Unscientific ideas and superstitious beliefs are being propagated with accelerated pace. Ridiculous claims are being made about an imaginary glorious past ignoring the true contributions based on historical evidence. These are acting against the propagation of scientific temper among the people. Opposing them is a responsibility of all citizens as per Article 51A of the Indian Constitution.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><i>Support for education in general and for scientific research in particular remains unbelievably low in India. While most countries spend over 6% of their GDP on education and 3% of their GDP on scientific and technological research, in India the figures are below 3% and 0.85% respectively. As a result, a large section of the country's population has remained illiterate or semi-literate even after 70 years of independence. Our college and university system is reeling under acute shortages of infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and funds for carrying out research. Science-funding agencies like CSIR and DST, pushed into acute fund crisis, are unable to disburse even committed support to students and research projects.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Let me conclude this rambling rant with three not unrelated observations/comments:</span></div>
<ul><div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">1. Compare the scrutiny undergone by the credentials of one nominated for possible fellowship of any of our science academies with those of any minister of MHRD; Does it make any sense to: (a) have the latter group decide on matters affecting the study of the former? or for (b) presidents of the academies to plead with a minister to leave education to people who have been educating generations for decades rather than to party loyalists?</span></div>
</ul>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<ul><div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">2. Ayesha Kidwai has this to say in her scathing critique on this draft Act: </span></div>
</ul>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><i>In its Press Release, the government has cited the bill as “downsizing the </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><i>scope of the Regulator”, “removing interference in the management issues of the </i></span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">educational institutions”, and "improving academic standards", but a reading of </i><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">the Bill, actually reveals the opposite intention, that will have a disastrous </i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><i>effect on the access that India’s young people will have to higher education, As </i></span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">well as the creation of jobs in the education sector.</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">3. And the track record of our Govt. in translating a passed Bill into ground</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">reality is not too reassuring! For example, India's Rights of Persons with </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Disability was passed in 2016, while we became a signatory in 2007 to the United </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) - the purpose </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">of which Bill is </span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of </i><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and </i><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">to promote respect for their inherent dignity</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">. We are still in the state where a child </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">with a locomotor disability is unable to go unaided to her school just a few </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">blocks away in Delhi or Pune, for that matter, and is expected to attend classes on the third floor of a </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">school without elevators? What price our Right to Education Act - which made </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">education a fundamental right of every child aptly on April Fool’s Day of 2010!</span></div>
<div id="sdendnote1">
<div class="sdendnote" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 13.333332061767578px; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.24in; text-indent: -0.24in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-43956915746452663072018-07-27T00:15:00.000-07:002019-04-06T19:45:02.252-07:00MSJE101: Reasonable accommodation <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The number in the title is to suggest that this blogpost might be part of a first course to our MSJE just as A101 might be a first course in algebra. The first chapter in the text prescribed for the course might begin with how the UNCRPD defines this notion and go on to explain the terms used in this definition:<br />
<br />
“Reasonable accommodation” means necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.<br />
<br />
Let me cut to the chase and get to my specific gripe. Briefly, as reward for my mathematical research accomplishments, I was chosen, about a decade ago, to receive a handsome fellowship from the Dept. of Science and Technology. This Fellowship allowed me to spend an almost obscenely large amount of money each year on my research - buy books, computers, travel for conferences anywhere in the world where I had been invited to talk, etc. Unfortunately, within a decade of my falling victim to multiple scleroses, I found that I needed to be assisted for many things - tying shoelaces, tearing open the little plastic/paper bags in which planes served you sugar, pepper, salt, after dinner mints, etc. All these stupid problems resulted in rendering solo travel unfeasible and my consequently having to turn down several invitations to international conferences dealing with precisely my areas of interest/expertise.<br />
<br />
When I spoke to my then Director (normally positive and receptive to my needs re accessibility), he said I had best seek permission from the Secretary, DST - whom I knew from having served together for three years on the Executive Council of the Indian Academy of Sciences. As narrated in a past blogpost, <a href="http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2012/07/two-for-price-of-one.html">http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2012/07/two-for-price-of-one.html</a>, he enabled me to have my wife accompany me on all work-related travel, with the cost of her accompanying me being met from the contingency grant component of my fellowship. In fact, he said that DST left the decision making to the director of my institute. And my then director was happy to interpret the rules in my favour. In fact, not long after, consequent to a horrifying experience (see my post <a href="http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2012/01/breath-of-fresh-air.html">http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2012/01/breath-of-fresh-air.html</a>) when we flew back from Hyderabad in 2010, my then director even consented to my request/demand that when we flew `on my fellowship', he waive the government requirement that when scientists were reimbursed for flights they took `on duty', they should fly Air India.<br />
<br />
From that time to the date of my `super-annuation' last year, I enjoyed the reasonable accommodation, extended to me, via my then director, by that past secretary of DST, by permitting my wife to travel with me to academic conferences in Trivandrum (now re-christened Thiruvananthapuram), Bangalore (Bengaluru), Kolkata (Calcutta), Delhi, Tirunelveli, Hyderabad, Kanpur, and even Berkeley, California and Toronto in North America, and Aberystwyth, in Wales, UK. I have advertised the broad-mindedness of my institute and of DST in extending this `reasonable accommodation' to me elsewhere in this blog and even in acknowledgements in the foreword to some of the recent math books I wrote.<br />
<br />
Just as the phrase `super-annuation' reminds one of the phrases `use by' or `expiry date', it also seemed to galvanise the thus far silent auditors of the institute into keenly scrutinising the institute using the fellowship thus. This has had two repercussions: (i) my current director feels constrained by the auditors' qualms to have my wife's ticket covered by my fellowship; and (ii) the spectre of the arbitrary `Air India rule' again threatens to haunt me.<br />
<br />
Even after `super-annuation' (in April 2017), I am apparently not perceived as being totally useless: thus my named fancy fellowship has been extended till the end of 2018; and I receive invitations to lecture all over India. But I will no longer be able to have my wife by my side to take care of the numerous personal needs necessitated by my `disability' or the freedom to fly Indigo which has taken great care of me and my wheelchair for many years, unless I pay for both our tickets from my pocket - even though my host institution would have promised, in their invitation to me, that they would pay for my ticket, and there is all that money promised by my fellowship! And these `rules' of the Govt. are so arbitrary and not applied uniformly. For instance, the age of super-annuation is different in different institutions - 65 in the IITs and IISERs, and 60 in TIFR and my institution. (Even in my institute, I have known people super-annuating at 60, a few at 62, a smaller number at 64, and even fewer at 65, these decisions supposedly being based on how productive they are perceived to be!) Incidentally there are three academies of science in India, and while the one based in Delhi insists on the `Air India rule', the one based in Bangalore apparently has no problem with their Fellows flying Indigo on `academy work'.<br />
<br />
Let me conclude this long lament by explicitly pointing out how or why my being denied the accommodations extended to me by the old DST secretary and my former director is directly violative of the `reasonable accommodation' recommended by the UNCRPD.<br />
<br />
To put it in a nutshell, I have spent 46 years of my life doing mathematics, in the process acquiring a specialisation with a flavour created uniquely by my particular trajectory in the study and research in my areas of specialisation. A mathematician at my level of expertise/competence would consider the freedom to participate, in conferences all over the world dealing with areas where (s)he has something to learn as well as contribute, a fundamental right. To exercise this right, I would need India to modify her rules so that whenever I am invited to attend a meeting/conference, I should be able to fly with my wife in a carrier of my choice, and have both our bills paid by whoever invited me. This should be done if India claims to be a signatory to the UNCRPD.</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-76934272391990082792018-05-19T22:30:00.000-07:002018-05-20T04:23:57.565-07:00Pearls before swine, leading horses to water, when only man is vile, etc.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">IMAGINE: if</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(1) public establishments - banks, restaurants, grocery stores -</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">could live up to their frequent promise to `assure you of our best</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">service at all times';</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(2) if the you in (1) above included older people with locomotor problems,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">even people with some manner of disability - locomotor/</span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">vision/hearing;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(3) that all the people mentioned in (2) above had access to all</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">facilities - electronic machines, toilets, ... - available to `normal'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">people;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(4) and if all this could be achieved by an email which would</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">get people with the expertise to take one look at the establishment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and tell you just what needs to be done.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Guess what! this is and has been possible in Chennai for many years. The</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Disability Rights Alliance is a group of people who have been freely</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">offering such advice for years - without even charging for travel costs incurred - </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and it has been a case of pearls before </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">swine. People say `sure, this has got to be done' but have done nothing! </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Like `taking a horse to water, but ...'. I should stop maligning animals unnecessarily, when only man is vile!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I guess the problem is that DRA doesn't throw in a few ramps and disabled</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">friendly toilets for free! Anyone heard of CSR?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, the offer is still there: interested people have only got to look</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">up DRA with Google's help and send that email!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The cause for this rant is that I have been having problems with both banks I have had an account with for years and have spent the last two days in their parking lots in the Chennai mid-May sun. Here is a photograph of the Adyar branch of one of those banks which explains why I was at their Mylapore branch yesterday - which branch had the inevitable `only one step'! When will people realise that anything at least as large as one is inaccessible for a wheelchair user? Why should ALL branches of ALL Banks be inaccessible?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5WygOrwUsqs/WwEEvgWlwGI/AAAAAAAABzI/vWH-6PpgzqAk8xcGtUIbQiDD7z5znrgDACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG-20180518-WA0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1152" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5WygOrwUsqs/WwEEvgWlwGI/AAAAAAAABzI/vWH-6PpgzqAk8xcGtUIbQiDD7z5znrgDACLcBGAs/s320/IMG-20180518-WA0001.jpg" width="320" /></a>is</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-6873954565888594412018-02-10T16:17:00.003-08:002018-02-10T22:14:05.357-08:00Open letter/plea to Mr. Pronoy Roy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dear Mr. Roy,<br />
<br />
I would like to ask a favour of you. Let me first introduce myself properly. I am (was?) a moderately accomplished and suitably decorated mathematician twenty years ago. Then I got multiple sclerosis 15 years ago, and slowly lost mobility. Ever since then, I have devoted a fair amount of time in disability activism. Incidentally, there are many such activists spread all over India, e.g., Shivani Gupta (Puttaparathi), Dr. Satendra Singh (Delhi), Vaishnavi Jayakumar (Chennai), and Muralidharan (Delhi) - all a lot more progressive minded than just about the only person with disability (PWD, from Delhi) who is ever consulted by the news media, including NDTV.<br />
<br />
It is true, but rarely highlighted by the Press, that PWD have suffered at almost each of the series of brainwaves inflicted on the nation by the Modi-Jaitley duo, for instance:<br />
<br />
<i>(a) Demonetisation:</i> did they spare a thought for a wheelchair user being forced to go at least once a week to a bank whose branches and ATMs are invariably totally inaccessible, or a blind person who suddenly has to deal with a new set of notes where notes of different denominations cannot be easily distinguished;<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>(b) Aadhar linking</i>: People with various kinds of disability have difficulty in<br />
recording a clear set of fingerprints: eg., a leprosy cured person may only<br />
have a stump!<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>(c) GST: </i>We saw calipers, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs being taxed at 18%, while Agarbattis incurred 0% tax.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>(d) Public transport: </i>Wheelchair users like me have no access to public transport: the floors of metros and platforms do not match, it is impossible to get on a bus or a local train... We have to go by autos; and the rise in petrol/diesel prices does not make this an attractive option, especially when your disability makes it difficult to be gainfully employed.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>(e) The whole issue of playing the National Anthem at the end of a movie</i> when wheelchair users got manhandled for not standing up and marking their respect for the flag or got shouted down by apoplexic generals for not keeping their hand on their chest during the playing of the anthem.<br />
<br />
<i>(f) Budget: </i>The budget has made no mention of provisions to fulfil the promises inherent in the RPD Bill of 2016, the Accessible India Campaign or Right to Education. Where are the funds to make a promised number <i>b</i> of buidings in <i>c </i>cities accessible by the end of 2018? (Incidentally the numbers <i>b</i> and <i>c </i>are woefully small and inadequate to make the large number <i>N </i>of our towns truly accessible!)<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Now for that favour:</i></b> I would love to see NDTV run a show (of the sort used in the Major Bakshi apoplexy episode discussed in (e)) with Modi and Jaitley occupying two of the six boxes and being bombarded on issues as above by Shivani, Satendra, Vaishnavi and Murali (occupying the remaining four boxes).<br />
<br />
Looking forward to an early and positive response,<br />
Thanks, and regards,<br />
Sunder</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-19454302424650694892017-12-30T23:05:00.000-08:002019-06-26T18:59:09.755-07:00One step forward, two steps back<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="p1">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I have been a wheel-chair user since 2010. Consequently the railway, metro and buses in India have been a closed book to me since 2010. The only way I can traval is by cars (private or large taxis like an Innova which will have room to transport my wheelchair and care giver). Or I can fly on our airlines, fervently hoping that my (motorised) wheelchair will safely make it to my destination without its battery having been at the receiving end of a hatchet job by airport security personnel.</span><span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">We have been making periodic attempts for several years at making the local metros, buses and roads/pavements accessible, and our successes can be listed on the head of a not particularly fat pin. Recently, some of us got to talk to the DG of CISF and found him very reasonable and amenable as we talked to him about problems we as PWD faced during air travel, the only (and not very cheap!) form of travel that is usable by us some of the time. I'd like to believe this catalysed two meetings of the big brass in the business of air travel, security, etc. After the last one, Nipun Malhotra posted on fb that he was now able to travel all the way sitting in his wheelchair, and I confirmed with him that I should not have a problem doing the same thing with mine.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">On the other hand, the last of these Delhi meetings with accessible noises was held on Nov. 22, and not even four weeks later, a computer scientist friend of mine was prevented by the Air India ground staff from boarding a flight from Bengaluru to Delhi citing security concerns allegedly stemming from his battery-operated wheelchair. Mr. O.P. Singh, can you please have your rules, about carrying one's own wheelchair on our planes, uniformly and universally available? Among the security personnel of an airline/airport I have seen, I must have heard more than a 100 different and original interpretations of the rules concerning motorised wheelchairs. Will you please help remove this ever-threatening sword of Damocles hanging over wheelchair users trying to fly in our skies.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Although private airlines have also been guilty of making things difficult for PWD (eg, the famous Spicejet vs. Jeeja Ghosh incide, and even Indigo of late, which I tend to use because I felt they were disabled-friendly, it is our National Carrier that never fails to surprise me in their rudeness/disabled-unfriendliness. A classic instance of this is when an ex-Air Force pilot who lost his legs in an accident went on AI for a meeting in Singapore, only to discover to his horror that AI could not find his wheelchair when they got to Singapore, and they offered him no help in acquiring a wheelchair for temporary use. Unfortunately, when anybody's work related travel is funded by Govt. sources, there is a GO that such travel must be on AI. I suppose this is one (only?) way of keeping AI afloat!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Georgia; min-height: 14.0px}
p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Georgia}
span.s1 {letter-spacing: 0.0px}
</style>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Just as they fixed Kaushik Majumdar on his way from his base in Bengaluru to Kolkata, they did such a hatchet job on my wheelchair on my Hyderabad-Chennai flight while returning from the International Congress of Mathematicians held at Hyderabad. All the wires connected to the battery had been systematically yanked out. As this was discovered in Chennai where this wheelchair had been made, I could have the damage rectified quickly. Since that day, I have never flown AI.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-27007568125978948532017-11-09T05:41:00.000-08:002017-11-25T18:07:36.891-08:00Doctor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the Indian Statistical Institute, when the honorific Professor or Doctor is used without a name following it, it always refers to its founder P.C. Mahalanobis or its leading statistician C.R. Rao, it being considered a sacrilege to suggest equating anybody else to one of these paragons. In my house, the word Doctor, if unqualified, always refers to Dr. Krishnamoorthy Srinivas, also respectfully called Chief or Professor in his Dept. of Neurology at the Voluntary Health Centre. Ever since I walked into his clinic after realising I had some neurological problem, I was captivated by him. On the one hand, his walls may be overflowing with his various degrees and assorted certificates, his table overflowing with photographs of various distinguished foreign doctors who visited his clinic, and he may seem to lose little time before letting you know of the prestigious schools and colleges he had studied at, and the rich and famous who have sought his expertise and help.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, once you get past these superficial irritants, you discover you are in the presence of something rare that you cannot find for any amount of money: the very essence of the `family doctor', unfortunately a fast dying breed. The reason for this piece now is that he unfortunately passed away last week, and I want to sing his praises to the world. even if I have said some of this briefly in an earlier blogpost (in <a href="http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/01/second-career.html">http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/01/second-career.html</a>, where I describe my first meeting with him as one of my main `life-changing moments'.) I want the several immoral money-grabbing charlatans that call themselves `doctors' today to know what goes into the making of an exemplary upholder of the Hippocratic Oath.<br />
<br />
How many doctors today<br />
* give you their mobile phone number at your first meeting and ask you to always fix up an appointment first, and are in their cabin at least 5 min. prior to the time agreed upon?<br />
* give you as much time as you need, and never rush you to leave?<br />
* always enquire about the other members of your family and their well-being?<br />
* never bring up the topic of money, and when you insist on asking him how much you should pay for his time, gives you the name of his favourite charity to which you may donate as much as you wish?<br />
<br />
Whenever any of us (in my immediate family) required to consult a medical specialist of any sort, I would ask his advice. I still see an eye specialist recommended by him. Just two weeks ago, I needed an orthopedic specialist about a broken arm but Doctor was unfortunately not in the best of health - and yet he sent a name and a mobile phone number to my wife through his wife. When I saw that doctor, I could see he was of the same vintage. When I mentioned the indifferent health of Dr. Srinivas, he said `but I saw him just the other day in the Club'. The happy resolution of my orthopedic problem turns out to have been a parting gift from Doctor to an ever-appreciative patient of 17 years' standing. It appears that I can no longer postpone addressing the question of what I would do with my MS when I can no longer stop by his ever-welcoming room at the VHS. You will be missed so much by so many people in so many ways, Doctor!</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-88988007143924233582017-10-11T19:47:00.000-07:002017-10-11T20:44:23.496-07:00bE inclusivE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I first learnt the word `inclusion' in the context of set theory in mathematics. Here are two definitions that I'd like to see someone make some of our netas in Delhi write 100 times as an imposition.<br />
<br />
A set (or collection) A is included in a set B if every member of A is a member of B.<br />
<br />
Two sets A and B are equal if each is included in the other; i.e., they should have the same members.<br />
<br />
For example, the set D of residents of Delhi is included in the set I of Indians. However, I is not equal to D since there are some members of I who do not have the good fortune of inhaling the polluted air of Delhi on a daily basis and instead live in `remote places' like Mumbai, Bengaluru or Chennai and are thus not members of D.<br />
<br />
Some people are, however, still under the erroneous impression that I is equal to D. In case you are curious about why I am going on in this fashion, I will be more than glad to elaborate. As I do, you will find repeated confusing of I with D by members of D.<br />
<br />
To start with, let me remind you that I spend a fair bit of my time being concerned with the work of a group calling ourselves the Disability Rights Alliance (DRA in the sequel). My friends in this group are largely from Chennai. All of this must be repeated ad nauseum, since we seem to be invisible to some of the more prominent disability activists in Delhi. For instance, a horrendous RPD Bill was almost passed in 2014, but many of us from DRA were at the forefront of a concerted campaign to bar the passage of this bill and in having it referred to a Standing Committee. This same Standing Committee almost fell into the I=D fallacy, and a further social media barrage from many of us made them avoid that error and come down to Chennai and another city in South India. They listened to our carefully prepared presentation and incorporated many of our suggestions in the report they gave the Govt. Unfortunately, the Govt. almost completely ignored that report and passed an RPD Bill - 2016 which still carried many <i>faux pas</i> of the 2014 precursor - and one of the oft-quoted Delhi disability activists was quoted by the press as hailing this landmark decision - even as many of us rued its divergence from the UNCRPD, in word and spirit.<br />
<br />
And now I shall come to the Fall of 2017. Last month, we came to learn that the DG of CISF (Director General of Central Industrial Security Force) was going to be attending a meeting in Chennai. Now there had been many horror stories about indignities suffered in air travel by PWD, and CISF is in charge of security in airports. I was asked to pursue the possibility of some of us presenting our woes to the DG. After many emails and phone calls, I cajoled them into letting us present our point of view. That attempt saw the DG seeming to be very sympathetic and pro-active, going to the extent of asking me to send his office a copy of the presentation I had prepared of our points of view.<br />
<br />
I followed this up with two or three mails where I pointed out at least two instances of passengers with disability suffering insensitive treatment at the hands of the security guards, and saying the time was ripe for a team from CISF and a group of disability activists to sit together to iron out their differences. Imagine my surprise at receiving an email on Oct. 4th, inviting me to exactly such a meeting on Oct. 11th. I wrote back saying nothing had been said about who would pay my airfare, and that it was clearly not proper for decisions to be made which would affect all Indians, with such decision-making being based only on opinions of Delhi-ites. To this, I got another email saying airfare could not be paid to people coming from outside Delhi, and suggesting that I provide them with names of some people based in Delhi. So I send desperate emails and phone calls to my PWD friends in Delhi to ensure our concerns would be well represented.<br />
<br />
India is one of the most e-literate countries, and there is no excuse for not having this and all such meetings Skype enabled so interested people from any city, not even necessarily in India, can participate in them. There is absolutely no justification for excluding people on the basis of the city they live in, especially when technology makes it so easy to be e-inclusive!<br />
<br />
I just heard yesterday's meeting went off quite satisfactorily and that a follow-up meeting is scheduled, which will be graced by the Minister of MSJE, and more importantly, will be accessible by skype to members of I-D! If this had been the case with yesterday's meeting, I could have been part of it from the comfort of my own study, and there need not have been all this tension and disappointment.</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-80663713004476528392017-09-06T00:35:00.000-07:002019-08-03T03:01:07.426-07:00We invite and piss on our teachers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is an open letter to our Prime Minister(*), and people who organise functions in Vigyan Bhavan to honour respected teachers, and achievers in other fields. Can you imagine greater disrespect than for Arjuna to invite Krishna to pay homage to him and then have him informed that all sarathy's should use the rear entrance? What Vigyan Sadan doles out to its teachers and other achievers - at least those that are unfortunate to have a disability - is that same manner of disrespect. The latest such instance was the day `honouring teachers'. As Shradha Chettri says in her piece <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/education/at-teachers-day-event-no-ramp-for-differently-abled-to-reach-stage-4830650/">http://indianexpress.com/article/education/at-teachers-day-event-no-ramp-for-differently-abled-to-reach-stage-4830650/</a>, this is at least the third instance of such flagrant violations of the RPD Bill by the organisers. What happened to Sugamya Bharat Abiyan, Pradhan Mantri-ji, which you have gone on record to call your `pet scheme'? Is there a date after which Vigyan Bhavan and similar inaccessible horrors handed down to us by our British masters have to start being accessible, or face consequent penalties? I can't wait for the day when I can sue these white elephants which bring shame on everything scientific. Watch out, Vigyan Sadan, JN Tata Auditrium and IISc - you are high on my `hit-list' When can I give documentation and demand action from the Accessible India Campaign?<br />
<br />
------------<br />
(*) The fact that he passed the buck to the Vice-President this time makes him doubly guilty of lack of <i>guru-bhakthi!</i></div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-88082663524020181512017-08-20T05:39:00.000-07:002017-08-20T23:28:47.130-07:00Crying Need<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday, I attended a meeting at Vidya Sagar, initially scheduled for 1030-1330. Many convincing points were raised, many obviously pressing considerations were brought up, but the issue is so large that no definitive conclusions could be reached nor could `to do' lists be drawn up. I unfortunately had to leave as it was already almost 1400 and there was no sign of some sort of consensus being reached any time soon. As though to punish me for my inconsiderate and rude behaviour, the elevator stopped almost as soon as I got in and it started moving! After repeated attempts to ring the alarm bell, I was finally `brought down'. After thinking about it, I felt I should try to make amends and try to raise general consciousness on the issue at hand.<br />
<br />
The subject of the meeting was `supported decision making for persons with typically psycho-social or intellectual disability and even those with `high support needs'. If you think about it, most institutions for persons with disability were founded by a parent of a child with disability, eg., the Association of People with Disabilities (in Bangalore), the Spastic Society (in Bombay), Vidya Sagar (in Chennai), ... The over-riding concern/worry of N.S. Ayyangar, Mitu Alur and Poonam Natarajan would have been how the child would fend for herself/himself when the parents are no longer around! Much of yesterday's discussion centred on such worrying facts as: the `child' may not even be aware of money-management, or even permitted to open and maintain a bank account in view of our sloppy attempt at writing an India-specific version of the UNCRPD! The mind boggles at the magnitude of the problem of setting systems in place to help such `children' (who would likely be fully grown adults when confronted with the situation outlined).<br />
<br />
There is a cousin of mine whose parents are no more, but fortunately, a trust was put in place by his father, manned by his son's siblings and their spouses, which was endowed sufficiently handsomely to ensure that his son's needs would always be taken care of - and fortunately there is no joker in the pack with the need/greed to misuse the funds set aside for running this trust. Since not everybody would be so fortunate, it seems natural that each such `child' must be able to have a body of trusted friends and relatives to orchestrate the necessary infrastructure to ensure a `normal' life, without fear of being taken advantage of by crooked members of his/her trust. The need to set desirable systems in place for every such `child' is the crying need of the hour that the group at Vidya Sagar attempted to make a dent into at yesterday's discussion. This is the sort of task that should be taken up seriously by our Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment, rather than renaming themselves using the term Divyang-jan - by which artifice they divert the problem-solving to the divinity with which they portray the PWD they should be serving!<br />
<br />
Why can't MyGov take a serious step in this direction? Most importantly, get inputs from the stakeholders before putting up a faulty system in place!</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-16236601952773337872017-07-30T02:06:00.000-07:002017-07-31T03:06:11.393-07:00My beef with architects<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Let me clarify something at the very start: I have nothing against architects; I have architect-relatives of many hues: brother, cousin (late, still living), son/daughter of of cousin, and so on.in short, to use a PGW-ism, you can't throw a cat at a family gathering of mine without it braining an architect or two.<br />
<br />
My gripe with architects is that their idea of aesthetics seems to almost demand lots of steps and consequently <i>inaccessibility</i> to a wheelchair user such as I! I have long carried on (e.g., see my blogpost <a href="http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/01/ingenious-hurdles-to-access.html">http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/01/ingenious-hurdles-to-access.html</a>) my quixotic joust with the architects who build these sadistic `windmills'. Another of my blogposts <a href="http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/06/whither-universal-design.html">http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/06/whither-universal-design.html</a> talks about our National Institute of Design which is like something out of a nightmare of a wheelchair user.<br />
<br />
This conviction of mine that accessibility is a blind spot for architects - in fact even that advertising this blind spot is almost necessary for being considered a good architect - was brought home to me with a thud when I saw a list of what were considered among the best recent constructions in<br />
<a href="http://www.earthamag.org/stories/2017/7/24/not-just-another-brick-in-the-wall-10-indian-architects-who-are-building-sustainable-homes">http://www.earthamag.org/stories/2017/7/24/not-just-another-brick-in-the-wall-10-indian-architects-who-are-building-sustainable-homes</a><br />
<br />
I keep ranting and the architects keep saying `there,there', as if I were a little child throwing a tantrum! How I wish Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier had been locomotor-challenged! <i><b>Will somebody please take me seriously?</b></i></div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-77303587540963379782017-07-03T01:35:00.000-07:002017-07-03T01:35:16.911-07:00Citizen Protection Act<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It is high time we had a `Citizen Protection Act' along the lines of the existing `Consumer Protection Act'. According to Wikipedia, the latter is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted in 1986 to protect the interests of consumers in India. <i>It makes provision for the establishment of consumer councils and other authorities for the settlement of consumers' disputes and for matters connected therewith also. </i>When you can demand satisfaction for goods you purchase, it stands to reason that you should be able to demand satisfaction for taxes extracted from your hard earned wages.<br />
<br />
Quoting such an Act, I would ask our Finance and Prime Ministers to justify why I (and other similarly deprived PWD) should pay taxes for:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>broad four lane highways which are rendered impossible to cross by such devilishly devious hurdles as four foot high road dividers, no pedestrian crossings rendered safe by traffic lights with a green option for pedestrians, and sadistically designed foot-bridges reached after climbing some forty steps?</li>
<li>buses, trains and metros which are uniformly unusable by a wheelchair user or a visibility impaired person?</li>
<li>roadway systems where pavements, in the rare instance that they exist, have to be shared by scared pedestrians with two-wheelers tearing down at breakneck speeds.</li>
</ul>
Armed with such an act, I would also<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>ask our MSJE why the entire ministry has not stood as one to protest the obvious and unfair implications of imposing GST according to inscrutable reasoning where agarbattis and sindoor are taxed almost nothing while prosthetic aids, crutches, wheelchairs and braille paper are taxed far far more heavily (rather than spending their energies on `fake news' about Kohli and Kumble throwing the final of the Champions Cup Trophy against `arch enemy Pakistan');</li>
<li>point out that the implications of GST to PWD are akin to encouraging Jaitley and Modi to pray to the accompaniment of all Hindu rituals while taxing them to walk or write; as Amba Salelkar quite rightly says in an article in Scroll, the state would do well to question its imposing taxes on PWD who are, ever so often, denied facilities that it extends to its `non-special' people (those not gifted with Divine powers and worthy of the title `Divyangjan')!</li>
<li>ask our `leaders' to own up not taking any action about the sorry state of affairs in our country where you are fair game for a grisly end if you are a Muslim or a Dalit; from carefully expressed sense of horror by respected public figures (see <a href="https://sabrangindia.in/article/memories-buried-deep-have-come-back-haunt-me-aruna-roy">https://sabrangindia.in/article/memories-buried-deep-have-come-back-haunt-me-aruna-roy</a>) to spontaneous outbursts by citizens across the country (with slogans like `not-in-my-name') it is increasingly clear that all but the RSS bhakhts writhe with shame and anger at this state.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-8375017282783078692017-06-17T19:27:00.002-07:002019-05-30T18:25:37.969-07:00Imagine what if ...- just for all those people<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This piece of make-believe fiction was born of a silly family whatsapp discussion. My sister-in-law commented that the job of the President of India was falling vacant in July in case somebody was jobless and interested. It so happened that I had formally retired from my position as senior Professor of mathematics just a few weeks earlier; so i responded `hey, I am jobless', and what followed was some tongue-in-cheek promises of promising support in the event of not being a competitor.<br />
<br />
As days went by, and as I saw the names that were being touted for possible candidates for the post, I started indulging in some day-dreaming, listing the pros and cons of the prospect of `putting in my application' for the job. By an odd coincidence, nearly the same fact was at the top of both lists, viz. the implications of and for my multiple sclerosis. Let me elaborate the lists as I see them, starting with the cons.<br />
<br />
I have become increasingly locomotor disabled, having spent the last month trying to make our residence, which has been home for almost 15 years, accessible. My disease leaves my energy levels depleted most of the time, so much so that my wife and I had decided to minimise, maybe even altogether eliminate, travel. One of the many reasons I have wanted to not even think of moving out of Chennai is that my doctor lives in Chennai and he has shepherded me through many phases of MS with an utmost comforting and soothing manner; and I would never want to forego the security of his proximity.<br />
<br />
Now for the pros. If the Indian president was essentially wheelchair-bound, the promises of rendering our country accessible can finally become reality. Magically, ramps and elevators will sprout everywhere. And even Air India will be forced to allow a PWD to take his own wheelchair into the plane, and to make sure that such wheelchair is available for its user when needed on arriving at the destination (unlike several horror stories that have been reported in our national newspapers of the wheelchair not being found at the destination!). Implementing the aims of the UNCRPD will be a breeze. And I will have occasion to tell a potential Presidential candidate, Mr. E. Sreedharan, of the NDA, that with his Metro, a last possible hope, of travel on public transport by PWD, has gone down the tubes - by showing him the records of DRA's attempts to engage CMRL over several years, that have been meticulously preserved by Vaishnavi.<br />
<br />
And now to answer the inevitable question of why anybody should consider my `job-application' seriously, I can trot out the list of winners (which also includes me) of awards such as Nobel Prizes, Magsaysay Award, Padma Awards of all hues (Shree, Bhushan, Vibushan), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, that have been periodically turned out by my extended family, going up to grand-uncle and grand-aunt!) After all, ours is a nation where people are made rulers because of their families! In terms of preparedness for the job, I am also a scientist, not unlike Abdul Kalam. I could then go on to enumerate my own achievements in mathematics and social awareness building of the plight of PWD.<br />
<br />
Finally, at a time when one hears ominous slogans like `United States of South India' and echoes of the old `anti-Hindi' sentiment, it would be a good idea to opt for a person who can't speak Hindi to save his life, and to give a semblance of an assurance to the southern states that non-Hindi speakers are still very much a part of the fabric of the Indian tricolour. <i><b>This is obviously not a carefully thought out idea (or job application) of mine; I do not want people to take me too seriously and mock me for even thinking of this as a possibility.</b></i><br />
<br />
On the other hand, just think what this would mean for the several millions of PWD in our country - a measure of how seriously their plight is taken by our Govt. being indicated by their calling us Divyangjan, while they have not given a moment's thought to finding out just how many such divine creatures there are! Just imagine what a PWD in the Rashtrapathi Bhavan can mean for the lives of the undetermined number of our divine PWD!<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-36306157887303834392017-05-23T07:32:00.000-07:002017-05-23T07:32:26.717-07:00Can't we ever learn from our mistakes? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Is it the Indian ethos that we always give the job to politicians and not to professionals? Let me begin with the glaring example of Indian cricket: around 1950, maharajas and bureaucrats were entrusted with leading or selecting teams, and I do not believe India ever won a cricket test, leave alone a test series. We have come a long way till we left such serious matters as selection of teams or captains to professionals. The path from the Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram (or Vizzy, as he was known) to Dhoni and Kohli was possible only after matters of selection were left to people who really played and knew cricket like Gavaskar and Kapil Dev. By adopting this obvious change in methodology, the Indian cricket team was transformed from a laughing stock to world-beaters.<br />
<br />
In contrast, you just have to look at our squads for the Olympics. Once every four years, we suffer the embarrassment of being the squad more than 50% of which consists of fat administrators who have probably never played anything; and the `bare'ness of our cupboard of olympic tallies reminds you of Old Mother Hubbard's! The fate of hockey and tennis are also similarly dismal.<br />
<br />
Now let me remove the kid gloves and come to the point. The people that this letting off steam is directed at is our various Government bodies `entrusted' with realising the promises made to the PWD (Persons with Disability) about giving them their rights and due.<br />
<br />
To put it simply enough for your limited powers of comprehension, here are some instances of how you jokers are pulling a Vizzy on us:<br />
<br />
* According to the Wikipedia, The NITI Aayog comprises the following:<br />
<br />
Prime Minister of India as the Chairperson<br />
<br />
A Governing Council composed of Chief Ministers of all the States and Union territories with Legislatures and lieutenant governor of Andaman and Nicobar.<br />
<br />
Regional Councils composed of Chief Ministers of States and Lt. Governors of Union Territories in the region to address specific issues and contingencies impacting more than one state or a region.<br />
<br />
Full-time organizational framework composed of a Vice-Chairperson, three full-time members, two part-time members (from leading universities, research organizations and other relevant institutions in an ex-officio capacity), four ex-officio members of the Union Council of Ministers, a Chief Executive Officer (with the rank of Secretary to the Government of India) who looks after administration, and a secretariat.<br />
<br />
Experts and specialists in various fields [4]<br />
<br />
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the Chairperson, the committee consists of<br />
<br />
Vice Chairperson: Arvind Panagariya [5]<br />
<br />
Ex-Officio Members: Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Suresh Prabhu and Radha Mohan Singh<br />
<br />
Special Invitees: Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Zubin Irani and Thawar Chand Gehlot<br />
<br />
Full-time Members: Bibek Debroy (Economist),[6] V. K. Saraswat (former DRDO Chief) and Ramesh Chand (Agriculture Expert)[7]<br />
<br />
Chief Executive Officer:Amitabh Kant[8]<br />
<br />
Governing Council: All Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors of States and Union Territories<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Query: How many of these members have a trace of a connection with disability? Will they know one if it hit them in the face?</i></b><br />
<br />
<br />
* There have been no end of pleas on our part that they have some PWD on their planning committees. Nevertheless, we are always presented with a fait accompli with deficiencies that would have immediately been spotted by a PWD. You just have to look at Vaishnavi Jayakumar's documentation of DRA's attempts at making CMRL (Chennai Metro Rail) think about making the metro accessible - and not screw up the last chance of having at least one means of public transport usable by PWD. When we finally did get a chance to take a look of the initial stretch from Alandur to Koyambedu, our worst fears had been realised : gap between train and pavement, toilets being totally inaccessible, ...<br />
<br />
* I recently learnt (from one of Vaishnavi's emails, naturally) of something called Pre-Legislative Process (PLP). I am mentioning below a few pertinent links in the hope that people in our Government will involve and take the opinions of the people for whose supposed benefit they are attempting to enact a law. Even if some of the PLP considerations came into being at the behest of the erstwhile UPA Govt, these suggestions make sense. <i>(e.g.., Pre-legislative scrutiny is a first step towards greater transparency in law-making.)</i> Please do not ignore these links out of sheer cussedness!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/when-the-state-listens/99/">http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/when-the-state-listens/99/</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/govt-set-to-consult-public-on-all-new-laws-amendments/">http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/govt-set-to-consult-public-on-all-new-laws-amendments/</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lawmin.nic.in/ld/plcp.pdf">lawmin.nic.in/ld/plcp.pdf</a></div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-63963512098155130292017-05-06T00:27:00.002-07:002017-05-06T00:27:18.318-07:00Let me lead my life; don't lead it on a one-way road to hell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This morning is the first Saturday morning of my `post-retirement life', and I can already see myself becoming one of those grumpy old scrooges who gets irritated with everything. Something to do with people not letting me lead my life the way I want to, constantly asking me to update my life and then rendering it unrecognisable and unfriendly. Let me do a slow rewind, starting with `the stone-ages' and fast-forwarding to today's land of highways and information fast lanes.<br />
<br />
When I finished a masters degree 44 years ago and went to foreign shores to do my doctoral work, I flew in a plane for the first time from a country where there was no television; where bicycling from home to the place of study (school or institute) was normal and feasible under half an hour; it was not uncommon to find a home with no phone; if you wanted information not available in your text books, then you cycled to a library, you had to find a plausible source of the desired information, possibly in the `reference section', and then copy down the desired information in a note-book - Xerox machines were still a decade away; and if you wanted to communicate with somebody in a different city or country, you had to write a letter, mail it, and await your response which could take some weeks to come. Despite this seemingly unnecessary self-denial, it did teach you to write well in order to communicate clearly and unambiguously. You did not say `how r u' or `lol' or `wtf'; these abbreviations are abrasive, often rude, and lead to entirely unwarranted misunderstandings - especially when they make up the fabric of conversation between people of different generations with different ideas about acceptable norms of behaviour! My first book was written in (an India-USA) collaboration with my (already former) thesis advisor in that era of `snail mail'; but thanks to his being from a generation which constantly honed its correspondence skills, that is probably my only totally error-free book.<br />
<br />
With the advent of computers, much less time is spent on real work - what with constant beeps announcing some `notification' or the other that only serve to take your mind off what it was (and should have been) involved with; and the death of the reading habit was slow and inevitable. (How many kids of today even visit libraries; even book shops and libraries are inevitably filling their shelves with electronic items at the cost of books. When mobile phones first made their appearance, I postponed getting (dependent on) one for as long as possible, convinced they only lead to waste of time. When it could be postponed no further, I got one of those old thin and small phones you could hold and operate with one hand, where you used the phone keys for texting with `1' yielding `a',`b' or `c', with the `prediction' option kicking in as you typed more of the word.<br />
<br />
This smartness seems to force you to (a) use large phones which do not fit easily into a hand or a pocket, (b) use two hands to receive a phone call, and (c) generally make the act of using a phone when vertical difficult if you have balance problems like I do. Also using the small QWERTY keyboard is tough if you have clumsy fingers like I do, so sending/responding to text messages is a major hassle. Then came smart phones which outsmart you by periodically asking, nay, persistently demanding that you `update' (now/overnight/later) your phone and revealing its new avatar after uploading, with many of the old options replaced by new and sometimes unfriendly ones! You can't keep on opting for `later' because the frequency of these demands increase exponentially, and eventually something does not work because you have an `old version'!<br />
<br />
There is a pattern, in all walks of life, to this frantic desire for modernisation. For instance, the government tells you they will improve infrastructure (read `roads' - even though at least two people die every month due to going into the shit-filled sewers of our cities to try and de-clog them). Instead, they will try to widen roads, chewing up any pavement on those infrequent occasions when they might have existed; then they will build a road separator, which will keep growing taller periodically, thus ensuring people cannot cross the streets; then they will remove all intersections and pedestrian crossings, thus ensuring that senior citizens or people with mobility problems can live in the cities only if they can travel in private cars; then they will threaten to build monster flyovers spanning several miles, whose construction will shamelessly and irreversibly cut down trees everywhere and reduce green cover. Never mind: just turn up the air-conditioner in your car!<br />
<br />
What my mood needed to go over the top was this email from my DRA friends about<br />
<br />
<i>NITI Aayog's three Year Action Plan for Persons with Disabilities</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://enabled.in/wp/niti-aayogs-three-year-action-plan-for-persons-with-disabilities/">http://enabled.in/wp/niti-aayogs-three-year-action-plan-for-persons-with-disabilities/</a><br />
<br />
The document talks about making a section of each class room accessible as per universal design standards in next 3 years. 3 years and just one section in each class room? It also mentions making just 10,000 buildings accessible in the next 3 full years?? Including the plan made under Accessible India Campaign that is been carried out so far?<br />
<br />
Secondly no mention about any new programs like personal assistant program or supported decision making units. No attempt for the appointment/deputation of an inclusion focal point within NITI Ayog.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Last but most importantly, the action plan PDF as released by NITI Aayog, which is attached alongside, is not accessible for persons with print disabilities.</b></i><br />
<br />
Yes Pradhan Mantriji, this report will go a long way in assuring your favourite Divyangjan that there is positive probability that your ministry may manage, by the year 2100, to have one school that is truly accessible and manage <i>to maintain a state-of-the-art Resource Centre, be a repository of research on good governance and best practices in sustainable and equitable development as well as help their dissemination to stake-holders</i> (point no. 10 in the stated `Functions' of this organisation according to Wikipedia).</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-84411350959169712862017-04-13T02:02:00.000-07:002017-04-13T02:02:57.102-07:00Give me a break, Pradhan Mantriji!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Our Hon’ble Prime Minister has urged all citizens to avoid usage of Petrol/Diesel for one day in a week. He has said that if 125 crore Indians pledge to do this, the dream of a ‘New India’ can be achieved.<br />
<br />
I have a query for our honourable PM: how can I do this, given these facts:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I am a wheel-chair user;</li>
<li>I live in a society which is completely non-inclusive;</li>
<li>cities are designed for cars, cars and more cars; </li>
<li>I can only cross a main road by either (i) climbing some forty steps to use a pedestrian overbridge, then climb down those 40 steps after having crossed the width of the road, or (b) taking my life in my hands and dashing across the road along with other hapless pedestrians, even as cars are crossing the intersection because no allowance is made for pedestrians to cross the street; </li>
<li>most roads do not have pedestrian overbridges and the pedestrian crossings are few and far between; and I will have to travel miles on my wheelchair, assuming this is possible, before I can find a traffic light with an invisible pedestrian crossing;</li>
<li>metros, train stations and bus stands are designed in such a mindless fashion as to ensure that I have no access to public transport of any kind.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
Before you come up with another of your brainwaves (your demonetisation gag forced me to make multiple trips to inaccessible ATMs and banks to get crumbs of my hard-earned money, for every rupee of which I have paid tax, now this), please come to my city of Chennai with its many dark-skinned people who know no Hindi and are yet citizens of the country you `rule'. You can stay in my house and tell me how I can possibly live my life and do my work without recourse to a petrol-using car; while I give you a blow-by-blow description of the barriers/hurdles that would impede the progress of my wheelchair from our flat to my institute barely 3 km away!</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-32430382990714645892017-03-11T04:56:00.001-08:002017-03-11T18:12:24.424-08:00Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your right<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just read this heart rending plea <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/when-compassion-isnt-enough/">http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/when-compassion-isnt-enough/</a> from a quadriplegic that our society make it possible for her to get out of her room, cross the street to join her friends for a meal in a restaurant, use her qualifications and earn a reasonable living, ... I tell you ; I am getting sick of this society where one has to beg for what is considered common courtesy, nay a fundamental human right, and of a government which continues to do nothing, but nevertheless keeps passing toothless laws and empty promises. How many countries will have the gall to sentence a wheelchair-using professor for having been a Maoist sympathiser without producing anything remotely like serious evidence? Maybe it is time for all of us to emulate his example and stop begging for scraps from a plate that should be our right, and start demanding it more aggressively.<br />
<br />
And with the recent `de-monetisation' exercise, you have to keep withdrawing money from the ATMs or cash counters of banks which are all equally inaccessible for a wheelchair user. People like Satendra Singh keep fighting for empathy and accessibility, in spite of repeatedly being fed lies when they file RTIs, and still keep up the fight!<br />
<br />
In my fury, I thought of Bob Marley, and turned on a video of his classic song `Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your right, Don't give up the fight'. The energy and conviction he puts into what could well be `our song', is all the motivation `our warriors' might need in their ongoing fight with an unyielding establishment. Though it is still time away, I would like to propose the following strategy. I learnt during a discussion with friends on our contentious RPD Bill of 2016 that all public buildings have been given time till Dec. 28th, 2018 to render themselves accessible. Let us give due warning to our `Divyangjan' ministries that we shall send them photographs (with a timeline of Dec. 28, 2018) of such notoriously inaccessible places as Vigyan Sadan and New Delhi Railway Station and promptly institute legal action. Had my late mother been around then, that would have been her 99th birthday. She had always ben a great source of encouragement, even actively encouraging me to get myself a motorised wheelchair (hard as it must have been for a mother to see her youngest son's reduced state of mobility). I promise to take this battle right up to our mantri-log.</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-67865899810698626332017-02-25T19:10:00.000-08:002017-02-25T19:45:27.717-08:00For the times, they are a-changing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Once upon a time, the `elders' taught their children to be compasssionate and inclusive towards others less fortunate than they. The four links below (all to articles in The Guardian) are a telling commentary of our times. They show that, today, the governments of four of the more powerful countries of the `West' (USA, Australia, New Zealand, UK) are kicking people out of their borders. The mammoth slide, from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, seems to suggest a sort of inevitability of this very sorry state of current affairs.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/australian-childrens-author-mem-fox-detained-by-us-border-control-i-sobbed-like-a-baby?CMP=share_btn_fb">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/australian-childrens-author-mem-fox-detained-by-us-border-control-i-sobbed-like-a-baby?CMP=share_btn_fb</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcry-after-sydney-doctor-faced-with-deportation-over-autistic-child">https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcry-after-sydney-doctor-faced-with-deportation-over-autistic-child</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/16/prestigious-academic-to-quit-new-zealand-after-autistic-son-refused-residency">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/16/prestigious-academic-to-quit-new-zealand-after-autistic-son-refused-residency</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/22/widow-faces-deportation-from-uk-despite-being-92-and-frail">https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/22/widow-faces-deportation-from-uk-despite-being-92-and-frail</a><br />
<br />
Hey Mr. Trump; take a leaf out of Ms. Mem Fox's book, and have your Homeland Security check out stories floating around about your wife not having been entirely truthful in filling forms in the past, and kick her out of America. That will be consistent with the four stories featured above.</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-5284381697657428882017-02-04T18:38:00.000-08:002017-02-04T21:41:09.675-08:00Telling it like it is<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><b>This is the reality.</b></i><br />
<br />
They will give us a divine name<br />
<br />
Dole out wheelchairs and other aids and appliances at any given opportunity<br />
to further their political career and to be seen as a great messiah.<br />
<br />
Be patronising<br />
<br />
Try to ruffle our hair (which we hate abominably)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>BUT</i></b><br />
<br />
Do they really care for us?<br />
<br />
Do we exist for them?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Reality Check</i></b><br />
<br />
*No mention of Disability in the Manifestos of the Political Parties (all)*<br />
<br />
Is this something new?<br />
<br />
Was there ever mention of DISABILITY in any political party’s Manifesto?<br />
<br />
<br />
*Why*<br />
<br />
For them<br />
<br />
We are no vote Bank<br />
<br />
We don’t exist<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*Ponder, React, Act *<br />
<br />
<br />
(My reaction to the writer of this email is:<br />
<br />
You forgot <b style="font-style: italic;">you are such an inspiration to all of us </b>after the comment about `ruffling our hair'.)</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-49788914527137173312017-01-25T00:26:00.000-08:002017-01-25T00:55:28.061-08:00Why not just shoot all of us and show respect to our national anthem?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Our country is one of glorious contradictions.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, we are one of the first countries to be signatory to the UNCRPD. This Convention states among other things that:<br />
<br />
<i> “Discrimination on the basis of disability” means any distinction, exclusion or restriction on the basis of disability which has the purpose or effect of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal basis with others, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field. It includes all forms of discrimination, including denial of reasonable accommodation; </i><br />
<br />
On the other hand, our Home Ministry demands, in spite of whatever the Supreme Court has decreed, that <i>differently abled people should not move about when the national anthem is played in movie halls and should, instead, stay alert</i>. So people with Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy or Autism can either not see any movies or be prepared to face the wrath of nation bhakths.<br />
<br />
Shri Rajnath-ji, can you please explain away the contradicting demands of the last two paragraphs?<br />
(See <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/politics/national-anthem-guidelines-for-physically-challenged-are-regressive-setback-for-disability-rights-3218032.html">http://www.firstpost.com/politics/national-anthem-guidelines-for-physically-challenged-are-regressive-setback-for-disability-rights-3218032.html</a> for all the gory details of how (y)our Sarkar works.)<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002110525606139138.post-11256482114121535682016-12-25T07:04:00.000-08:002016-12-25T17:14:20.250-08:00Achche Din have arrived - and how!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2016 has been a knockout year on so many counts. I don't think the world can survive too many more such years. Here is a list of the various body blows she has been subjected to: Brexit, Trump, increasing violence by American cops against black kids, American legislation permitting students to carry guns (even machine guns) into the classroom, people being forced to flee from country to country due to bias against their `unfamiliar' customs/languages/religions ...<br />
<br />
Coming to India, boys being manhandled, even killed, because they were suspected of eating beef (when in fact they had not), repeated instances of young Dalit men committing suicide in hostels of IITs because of the daily trauma they were subjected to, a man with physical disability being brutally assaulted because he did not stand up for, and was thereby guilty of disrespect to, the national anthem; who cares if he didn't stand because he couldn't? Now the Supreme Court has ruled that everybody should stand when the national anthem is played at the end of each screening of a movie; the doors are to be closed until the anthem is over, to prevent people from leaving the movie hall before the last `jaya hey' is sung; never mind the fire hazard caused by such locking in of people; and finally, EVERYBODY, without exception, MUST STAND for the anthem! Even a wheelchair user?<br />
<br />
And for the icing on the cake, the much heralded RPD Bill was tabled in Parliament amidst many adjournments in view of opposition parties protesting the recent demonetisation exercise that was suddenly thrust on the man on the street, thereby creating chaos and untold hardship on those people who do not have the luxury of holding bank accounts or credit cards.<br />
<br />
The RPD Bill was unanimously passed with essentially no discussion, in spite of the numerous proposed amendments. The reader of this blog will know that an attempt was made to hurriedly pass an even more objectionable version of this Bill in 2014. The Disability Rights Activists in Delhi, whose opinions are usually the only ones sought by our National Press, have been peddling the dubious `Something is better than nothing' or `You can never have a perfect bill' line, and strongly supporting the passing the bill in 2014 itself. Fortunately, enough people saw the drawbacks of the Bill and made a big noise on social media to ensure that the Bill was forwarded to a Standing Committee. After many people, including the loudest of the voices from the DRA, made a big issue of the need for consultations being held outside Delhi also, the Standing Committee came to Chennai and Bangalore and graciously gave plenty of time for DRA to explain the reasons for their opposition to the Bill. They subsequently incorporated many of our suggestions in their recommendations to the Govt., and the resulting changes in the draft of the Bill reflect that. Unfortunately, the Bill was still passed with enough drawbacks for many of us to get really annoyed when a senior activist like Javed Abidi vociferously backed the passing of the Bill `at least this time' and later applauded vociferously when the Bill was passed. The reason for our annoyance with him is that there is a large group of people in Delhi who seem to unthinkingly agree with anything he says, possibly because the National Press has almost made him the face of Indian Disability Rights. The current Bill is ideologically faulty and dangerous. As one of the leading lights of the DRA says: <i>Better the group suffers than an individual's liberty lost</i>.<br />
<br />
Let me iterate a few of the gripes I have with the current avatar of this bill:<br />
<br />
The bill claims slightly pompously that<i> Disability has been defined based on an evolving and dynamic concept</i>, whereas what has evolved is that the number of conditions that have been `defined' as constituting disability has now been increased to 21! I challenge anybody from the ministry entrusted with matters related to PWD, whom they have rechristened as Divyangjan in spite of vigorous protests by those so renamed, to give a clear argument as to why these, and only these, 21 conditions may be called forms of disability!<br />
<br />
So many clauses are phrased with a built-in loophple which is almost clamouring to provide shelter for offenders of the Bill. Let me illustrate:<br />
<br />
Clause (3) states: No person with disability shall be discriminated on the ground of disability, <b><i>unless it is shown that the impugned act or omission is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.</i></b><br />
<br />
Clause 9. (1) states: No child with disability shall be separated from his or her parents on the ground of disability<b><i> except on an order of competent court, if required</i></b>, in the best interest of the child.<br />
<br />
Clause 14: My better-informed friends of the DRA have grave reservations on the implications of this whole `guardianship' issue for `legal capacity'; and in fact consider this the most objectionable clause in this Bill.<br />
<br />
My final gripe is the toothlessness of this law replete with grand statements with no indication of either `by when the stipulated measures would be in place' or `what the penalty for violations would be' and `how does one ensure this'. Such statements as the following are everywhere dense in this Bill:<br />
<br />
Clauses 16 and 17, dealing with inclusive education, make promises that have been fulfilled probably only in the UK or USA. I have been in the business of research and education for the past 35 years and screaming about the need for accessibility for the past five or six years, and IISc, Bengaluru (considered by many as the jewel in the crown of our research and higher education) has hardly shown an iota of improvement all this time in terms of accessability.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, what can I do if, five years from now, I still find:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>that the following buidings are still hopelessly inaccessible:</li>
</ul>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>the Vigyan Bhavan where the Government periodically chooses to honour various Divyangjan for sundry achievements - which less divine people find `inspirational'?</li>
<li>IISc, TIFR, CMI or various IITs, where one still sees people with locomotor disabilities being carried up numerous flights of stairs on the backs of friends to get to class;</li>
<li>Movie Theatres where there is either no room to park a wheelchair, or the inevitable steps to go up to one's seats (unless they are in the first row);</li>
<li>the Music Academy and other concert halls during the Chennai season which have stayed an essentially forgotten experience ever since I could not comfortably/safely walk on my own two feet;</li>
</ol>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>or that I cannot enter my bank or use its ATM machines which are decorated with their inevitable three or four steps with a swinging door that opens outwards like adding insult to injury.</li>
<li>or that I cannot use public transport because (i) I could not cross a street which has been thoughtffully provided with a three foot high road divider, or (ii) I could not get down from a platform to use a bus, or (iii) I cannot use a train because of different levels of platform and train, or (iv) I have to fly everywhere, with my wife, and it is costly when I can no longer `claim the expense'.</li>
</ul>
<br />
Which minister without a trace of divinity do I sue the pants off of, for this “discrimination” in relation to disability (Divyangjan) as defined by Clause 2(h) of this Bill, i.e., distinction, exclusion, restriction on the basis of disability, impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field and discrimination and denial of reasonable accommodation.</div>
V.S. Sunderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521983650558179149noreply@blogger.com0