A few days ago, the Economic Times in India cited this news item, whose second pargraph has the telling line which describes `Accessible India' as the Prime Minister's pet initiative. (If this is the status of his pets, imagine the plight of his not-so-favourite people/animals!)
If you want to make a study of status of educational institutions in India, wouldn't it be a good idea to study practices of the more successful ones (like the Indian Statistical Institute or IIT, Mumbai) rather than confine oneself to the self-financing colleges of Tamil Nadu? I hear that the study cited above only refers to buildings in a list prepared by Accessible India Campaign.
When I asked around, I found that the Govt. has adopted a typical bureaucratic and unimagintive procedure doomed to failure. The Govt. asked the State Govts. to give a lit of the most frequently visited public buildings. The Auditors were selected through a bid by the Government on the basis of their experience and competence.
On the other hand, imagine a scenario where an imaginative photographer makes a five minute walk through video of Arushi, Bhopal and Vidya Sagar, Chennai, and follows that up with inaccessible metros and reilway stations; and then draw up a list of respected people in the field (Anil, Vaishnavi, Shivani, Anjlee, and NO ministerial type, maybe a respected IAS officer) to draw up a game-plan. That will make the task at hand clear as mud.
For instance, I just received a message on WhatsApp about 350 `no-frill airports' coming up at one shot. (What we do not want is a mindless repeat of endless inaccessible elections. Recent experience shows that if there was any improvement in the recent local elections, it was because of the initiative shown by vaerious groups of PwD.) Immeditely, there was a flurry of messages on WhatsApp by `the community' suggesting ways and means of creating an `accessible airport template manual or the Aviation Ministry to send out to these 350 airports'. (One has to just compare this with the desire and urgency shown by the Gehlots and the dignitaries of the Divyang Ministries to do something similar before another opportunity goes down the drain.)
If you want to make a study of status of educational institutions in India, wouldn't it be a good idea to study practices of the more successful ones (like the Indian Statistical Institute or IIT, Mumbai) rather than confine oneself to the self-financing colleges of Tamil Nadu? I hear that the study cited above only refers to buildings in a list prepared by Accessible India Campaign.
When I asked around, I found that the Govt. has adopted a typical bureaucratic and unimagintive procedure doomed to failure. The Govt. asked the State Govts. to give a lit of the most frequently visited public buildings. The Auditors were selected through a bid by the Government on the basis of their experience and competence.
On the other hand, imagine a scenario where an imaginative photographer makes a five minute walk through video of Arushi, Bhopal and Vidya Sagar, Chennai, and follows that up with inaccessible metros and reilway stations; and then draw up a list of respected people in the field (Anil, Vaishnavi, Shivani, Anjlee, and NO ministerial type, maybe a respected IAS officer) to draw up a game-plan. That will make the task at hand clear as mud.
For instance, I just received a message on WhatsApp about 350 `no-frill airports' coming up at one shot. (What we do not want is a mindless repeat of endless inaccessible elections. Recent experience shows that if there was any improvement in the recent local elections, it was because of the initiative shown by vaerious groups of PwD.) Immeditely, there was a flurry of messages on WhatsApp by `the community' suggesting ways and means of creating an `accessible airport template manual or the Aviation Ministry to send out to these 350 airports'. (One has to just compare this with the desire and urgency shown by the Gehlots and the dignitaries of the Divyang Ministries to do something similar before another opportunity goes down the drain.)
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