My beef with architects

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.

My gripe with architects is that their idea of aesthetics seems to almost demand lots of steps and consequently inaccessibility to a wheelchair user such as I! I have long carried on (e.g., see my blogpost http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/01/ingenious-hurdles-to-access.html) my quixotic joust with the architects who build these sadistic `windmills'. Another of my blogposts http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/06/whither-universal-design.html talks about our National Institute of Design which is like something out of a nightmare of a wheelchair user.

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
http://www.earthamag.org/stories/2017/7/24/not-just-another-brick-in-the-wall-10-indian-architects-who-are-building-sustainable-homes

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! Will somebody please take me seriously?

Citizen Protection Act

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. It makes provision for the establishment of consumer councils and other authorities for the settlement of consumers' disputes and for matters connected therewith also. 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.

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:

• 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?
• buses, trains and metros which are uniformly unusable by a wheelchair user or a visibility impaired person?
• 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.

Armed with such an act, I would also

• 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');
• 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')!
• 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 https://sabrangindia.in/article/memories-buried-deep-have-come-back-haunt-me-aruna-roy) 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.