Equals?

Recently, some disability activist friends of mine wanted to register an organisation (a DPO called Equals), and this involved going to the sub-registrar's office in Saidapet, Chennai. I have had to go to this office a couple of times myself in the matter of a mortgage for my flat. Every visit there was a painful experience.  In the first place, it is located on a narrow street with vehicles parked randomly and densely so that it is very difficult even for a `normal person' to go from a car to the office building. And there is the inevitable flight of some number (my memory says about three to five) of steps to be navigated before one can get from the pavement to the interior of the building.

And the inside is a typical Governmnt office, swarming with touts who are waiting to explain the complicated rules and procedures to be followed and to run your errand for a fee in the almost sure event of your not understanding the procedure explained by them. This is all unofficial, of course, and if you take the seemingly easy way out of accepting their offer, what follows is alternate periods of long waits (while he runs up to the office on the second floor to execute the next step of `the procedure') and negotiating with him when he comes and says he needs an extra N rupees in order to give somebody along the chain who HAS to be placated - i.e., have his palm greased - before proceeding to the next step.

But Rajiv (in his wheelchair) and Meenakshi (with her crutches and other assistive devices) are stalwarts in the area of disability activism who are made of sterner stuff. (Otherwise they could not have lasted more than two decades doing this kind of work!) So Rajiv leaves his wheelchair downstairs and crawls on hands and knees up the infinitude of not particularly clean steps to go up the two floors, and Meenakshi must have undergone an equally painful ten minutes each way, to go up and then climb down all the steps. But at the end of the day, `Equals' is up and running, and they are one step ahead in the never-ending struggle to make it possible for PWD to lead a life on par with `normal' people.

This was covered by the newspapers today, and here is a link to one of the newspaper articles which carries a photograph of Rajiv dragging himself down the stairs. And this is 19 years after the PWD Act and seven years since India became a signatory to the UNCRPD. (In case our politicians and law makers do not remember, the acronym stands for `United Nations Convention on the Rights for People with Disabilities'.)

It is a crying shame that every year, the relevant Ministry spends only a ridiculous fraction of the money allotted for various measures, and that too on trivial peripherals without doing anything about addressing the basic problems of accessibility. A recent press release from the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment says:

13th National Meeting of the State Commissioners for Persons with Disabilities to Review Implementation of the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995. 

The Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Shri Thaawar Chand Gehlot inaugurated the 13th National Meeting of the State Commissioners for Persons with Disabilities to review implementation of PWD Act here today. 

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The Minister emphasized on ensuring barrier free access to public places for persons with disabilities in a time bound manner. 

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I wonder: is Tamil Nadu, where Meenakshi and Rajiv underwent the tribulations described above, one of the Indian states, to which Shri Gehlot's utterances apply? Just how much longer should this kind of unnecessary hardship be endured by PWD, leave alone the well-meaning advocates of their rights?

Surely you are joking Mr. Director General of Civil Aviation!

I am getting sick of the monotonous regularity with which our airlines continue to discriminate against PWD because they strike the aireline authorirties as being potential security hazards (sic) to other passengers. The latest such manifestation of such insensitivity was when a woman was not allowed to board a flight with her autistic son who was perceived a such a hazard. See http://www.deccanherald.com/content/418968/no-air-travel-mentally-challenged.html for the gory details. Unlike the opinion apparently expressed, according to the above report, by Mr. Javed Abidi - almost universally perceived by the Indian Press and powers-that-be in Delhi as the spokesman of PWDs in India -  I am not at all surprised by this incident. I do not forget what Jeeja Ghosh underwent. And she is far from being a unique victim of such blatant travesty of justice

What makes this latest assault on PWDs doubly horrific is that many of us were involved in a long exercise (with a groupspace called `flight:we-the-pwd...') in how people with disabilities could ensure better experiences when taking domestic flights. And about all I can lay hands on to show for all our effort was this draft of an official document, which, although `dated ../../2013' shows that our civil aviation ministry has shockingly short memory: http://dgca.nic.in/misc/draft%20cars/D3M-M1_Draft_July2013_.pdf . Just when will all these politically correct sounding statements get translated to some sensitivity on the ground - that too, from the National Carrier Air India. I swore some years ago to never fly Air India and their ground staff are vindicating this decision at least once in three months. Do our government officials have no accountability? Can they say sweet nothings which are not reflected in how their departments function? Do they have no pride in their work?

Never-ever-more

What do the following places have in common: J.N. Tata Auditorium (Bangalore), Vigyan Bhawan (Delhi), Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), Tata Institute of Science (Mumbai), The Museum Theatre (Chennai), Siri Fort Auditorium III (Delhi)? Aside from the fact that they are the places where the Indian Government transacts its more `significant' activities, they vie with one other in being inaccessible to people in wheelchairs. While I have documented/substantiated my claims about all these places (except the last one) in this blog - in the posts titled What got my goat - and made me pick up my pen (March 2012), Nevermore (May 2014), The mother of all institutes (December 2013), and Ingenious Hurdles to Access (December 2011) - this post addresses itself to the last of these buildings.

In the post Nevermore referred to above, I had spoken of how Abha, a wheelchair-bound writer with many accomplishments was called to a premiere of the movie called Accsex that was brilliantly held at an inaccessible venue, and of how we should boycott any event to which we are invited if it is at an inaccessible venue. And, sure enough, it has happened to her again, this time at the Siri Fort Auditorium. No words are needed when you see the photograph below:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203983299480770&set=pcb.10203983336001683&type=1&theater

When Abha posted on Facebook that this movie was going to be screened for bout a week in late July/early August, I seriously thought of trying to see it when I go to Delhi for a few days in late July. But fter these two miserable experiences, I really need to check with a friend if the venue is really accessible.

India is supposed to be one of the countries with the highest percentage of its population below 25 years of age; but I would hazard a guess that it must be near the top of the table when it comes to the percentage of its elected representatives who are over 60 years of age. You would imagine that these elected representatives would think a little more about how they themselves will negotiate all these stairs-filled halls in twenty years time, when their knees start creaking! Since they don't seem to think of the needs of PWD or feel any compulsion to pay any heed to the fact that India is allegedly a signatory to the UNCRPD, this is the only way we can hope that they will be moved to doing something we may benefit by!