Welcome home

I am just on the verge of winding up my two-month sojourn in USA/Canada where I have been savouring the benefits of living in a society that makes some effort to render its infrastructure accessible. I had made some noises during these past weeks about even these societies not being quite perfect in their attempts to be inclusive.

But now as I prepare to return to India, I must prepare myself to come down to earth with a THUD and return to the insensitivity and non-inclusive attitudes of the powers that be. The editorial in today's Hindu did that in as fast and ungentle a manner as can be imagined. The move by the Vice Chancellor of IGNOU to essentially shut down one of the few avenues available to bring the hearing impaired into the functioning of the rest of the world is abhorrent and has no place in a responsible democracy.

Cribbing about not having a few ramps to access the few reataurants or shops that do not conform to the generally accessible infrastructure of the North American continent, while the Indian subcontinent is taking active measures to render itself non-inclusive seems almost akin to Nero's fiddling amidst the burning ruins. The editorial in Hindu was a gentle reminder that my holiday from grim reality was over and that it is time to return to the (Indian) drawing board, with a recharged will to struggle for the minimal gains one can hope to glean from an exceptionally recalcitrant environment/administration.