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.
I have a query for our honourable PM: how can I do this, given these facts:
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!
I have a query for our honourable PM: how can I do this, given these facts:
- I am a wheel-chair user;
- I live in a society which is completely non-inclusive;
- cities are designed for cars, cars and more cars;
- 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;
- 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;
- 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.
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!
