Madly rushing to the only possible conclusion with a short-sighted and one-track mind

Some months ago, I was led to believe that the Corporation of Chennai was being sensible and open-minded to the dream of restoring public spaces to the people and not sacrificing them at the altar of the automobile. I had been to a consultation involving the Commissioner of Chennai Corporation and organisations like the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) and Chennai City Connect Foundaion (CCCF), where an entire day was spent by some six groups of ten people each, charting out possible streets which could accommodate bicycle lanes, and such notions unimaginable in Indian cities. Even last week, Raj Cherubal of Chennai City Connect was proudly telling me Chennai was becoming the cynosure of all eyes, with such projects as reclaiming pavements in Besant Nagar, Pantheon Road, etc., and the great plans in store for rendering large parts of Mylapore and T. Nagar `for pedestrians only'!

Imagine my shock when I learnt there was going to be a meeting between Chennai Corporation officials and residents of Mandaiveli to discuss plans for the proposed grade separators in Mandaiveli and three other places, one of which is to be at an intersection used every day by many of my friends on their way to and from work. So I sounded the alarm to our friends that some of us should go to this meeting to put across our point of view. As it turned out, only three of us had planned to meet there, and the omens on the way did not augur well. Firstly, on the way to the hall where this meeting had been announced, we had to pass SIET road, one of the roads where the pavements had allegedly been `reclaimed' and what I saw was this:

Bikes claiming the pavements back!

When we got to the hall, where I had insisted on taking my wheelchair if at least to make a statement, what met me was:

The inevitable step, without even an apology for a ramp

I soldiered on till the step, and `volunteered' a couple of people there to help carry the wheelchair up the inevitable single step. Although I got there only half hour after the stated starting time, it was only after I had commandeered a corner at the front of the hall that the dignitaries trooped in and the show got on the road. The presentation started with a descriptions of the four roads coming into the Mandaiveli intersection under discussion. We were provided with statistics of how many cars went from any one of those roads to any other in a specified interval of time, and how they were planning an overbridge from one of the four roads to another, and how this would make it possible for so many more cars to traverse the intersection in the same interval of time. I kept tying to raise my hand to ask what the statistics for the pedestrians were, and if it was assumed to be obvious that enabling more cars to travel faster was the only way to go forward. But of course, my hand was never acknowledged and one had to wait until a boring littany of numbers regarding the widening of roads had to be gone through, which nobody would have remembered a few minutes later, and the the floor was open for questions only after the presentation was over. Immediately, some gentleman started shooting off his questions before I could hope for a kindly soul to recognise my raised hand. Thereupon, the Mayor of Chennai Corporation came down from the dais and came down to speak to this gent, crossing me on his way, followed by a group of followers, so I had to strain to even see the Mayor's back. The gentleman who had made the presentation was next to me and I pleaded with him to give me a chance to ask a question. After a few minutes, he gave me a cordless mike so I could chirp in when there was a lull in the dialogues the Mayor was being engaged in by several people. When my chance came, I told the Mayor I had been waiting a long time to ask some questions, and he very magnanimously asked me to `pray proceed'. I said that we had only heard about cars, and I wanted to know how people like me or elderly people would get to cross the newly constructed roads whose purpose seemed to be to ensure a constant free flow of traffic; he turned to one of his flunkies and said `there are indications of that in our maps, no?'. The flunky said yes, the mike was taken away from me, and I realised there was litle point in our staying any longer and came out with a sick feeling in my stomach. Sure enough, today's newpapers covered the `event' and said that decisions had been finalised by the Corporation on the grade separators in the four places mentioned earlier.

The short-sightedness mentioned in the title refers to the comment in the presentation that when this overbridge had come up, we would have no problems of traffic congestion for the next twenty years. Would more overbridges come up after twenty years, then?

The one-track mind refers to the thinking that the only way forward is to have more and more cars traveling faster and faster? No one seems to even consider the fact that the number of road traffic accidents per year have been steadily increasing every year at a staggering rate, and with it the number of fatalities, a very high percentage of which consists of elderly pedestrians. This model of `growth' will only result in confining the aged and the people with disabilities to the four walls of their homes.

The only possible conclusion I am talking about is total stagnation - with nobody getting from anywhere to anywhere else - cos we'll soon run out of gasoline to run our cars, and we would have backed ourselves into a corner due to not having improved our public transport.

And here is something else that really gets my goat. I received email about how in order to prevent our motor-cyclists parking their vehicles in the way, the Bombay Metro has started putting up bollards all over the place, thereby enacting a case of throwing out your wheel-chair-users along with the motor-cycles! See this link if you want to get really dejected/furious. And as icing on the cake, here are some (bad) photographs I took of motorcyclists whizzing along on the pavement of Gandhi Mantapam Road:

Where does one walk? 

Fortunately, I will not have to live in this country forty years from now, but heaven help our children!

Please keep my money, Mr. Banker!

I was at a meeting yesterday with some friends from our `Disability Rights Alliance' , the aim of the meeting being to try and draw up a list of some `reasonable, minimal and non-negotiable' requirements to be put up by two of us who will be going to Delhi this week-end to be part of a `consultation with the powers that be' - with our `begging bowl' to say `pretty please, would you be so kind as to satisfy these greedy wants of ours'.

The reader should know the background, where many perfectly intelligent and capable people are being denied, only because they have cerebral palsy or some psycho-social disorder, the right to own and maintain a bank account! Here is my bid to itemise some of these demands. You would think any self-respecting democratically run country - leave alone the largest one in the world - would consider these to be self-evident necessities!

A note on some acronyms used: (i) PWD = person(s) with disability; (ii) P without D = the other kind, for whom the banks seem to work!)

1. All banks should, when necessary, accept a thumbprint of a person in lieu of a signature. (If this can be done for any one human being (e.g., illiterate, or aged and unable to sign), there can be no justification for not doing this for every person – with or without disability. Any bank that does so should be liable to a fine/penalty, and should recompense the person so discriminated against.
2. All bank personnel should undergo a course of sensitisation where they learn the do's and don't's of dealing with PWD.
3. Every bank shall have an accessibility officer to identify potential problems of, maintain statistics regarding, and facilitate communication with and transactions by persons with disabilities.
4. ATMs should be usable by people with all manners of disability (be it visibility, auditory, speech or locomotor impairments). A third of the branches of each bank in each town should have a drive-in ATM.
5. In cases where some PWD are constrained to have an account jointly with a guardian, all transactions in that account must be immediately intimated to both account holders.
6. Appropriate safe-guards must be built into the mechanisms by which guardians are assigned to PWD who may be deemed to need them.
7. Banks should initiate drives to get PWD among their clientele, maintain statistics of the PWD among their clientele, and disincntives should be in place to discourage banks where the percentage of PWD among all clients varies from the mean beyond statistically acceptable standards.
8. ATMs should not ask clients for their phone numbers (simply because they may not have one or be deaf!) It should be possible to operate an ATM purely on the basis of the thumb-prints of the user.
9. Any Bank refusing to let a PWD open an account must be severely and sternly reprimanded by the RBI and appropriate penalty should be levied. The same holds for any bank found using different criteria for the same service to PWD and P without D.
10. A master circular laying out all these considerations concerning PWD should be distributed and prominently displayed in all Banks.
11. The absurd practise of people with certain kinds of disability needing to obtain a certificate that `they do not need a guardian' should immediately be done away with. Unlike other citizens of the land, are PWD guilty until proven innocent?

Dear Mr. President, please do not make vacuous statements

Our politicins are masters of giving speeches where they seem to promise all
sorts of good things, when in fact they have carefully chosen their words so
they cannot later be faulted for not having fulfilled their promise.

Our president, in a recent address, mentioned `specially abled' people for
the first time. Great progress, you would think; but sift through his three
sentences with a toothcomb:

The welfare and rehabilitation of specially - abled people is integral to my government's vision of a caring society.

Hold your horses, Pranab-da! I need no rehabilitation from you or anybody. I don't want your caring society's offer to carry me up three steps when you have not had the forethought to instal a ramp when you have steps. I do not need your sympathy and caring; I want to be able to participate in any walk of life that you are able to.

It will take steps to provide dignity of life to them by facilitating their participation in all walks of life. 

Mention ten, or even just three, specific steps your government will take to `provide dignity of life' to me. Will you make it possible for me to get out of my house on my wheelchair, get down from the pavement to the road, and cross the road? Will you make it possible for me to take a bus or train or metro? Will you make it possible for me to exercise my franchise at the next elections? And will I be able to do all these three things by myslf without having to have somebody to help me achieve each of these mind-boggling and death-defying feats?

Steps will be taken to identify their special needs and to provide institutional care to them.

And what is this new terminology `special needs'? You and our prime minister need spectacles to read anything, while I do not need any such aids to read. I need a wheelchair to move around while you are able to walk. Is your need special or is mine special? Maybe one is `more special' than the other? I notice you are planning to have special institutions to dish out the special needs for the specially abled. I just hope these are not the kind of institution where people with certain kinds of special needs are kept tied up in chains and possibly get charred to death when thee is a fire in their `special institution'.

India is supposd to be a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability. (Please note the internationally accepted terminology: I am not a disabled person, just a person with disability who is rendered disabled by an unfriendly environment riddled with barriers!) When we became signatories to the UNCRPD, we promised to `take steps' to ensure a barrier-free environment and inclusive society; the only steps I can see are more buildings with steps but no ramps!

So please make measurable promises and live up to them - and do not dish out this vague nonsense which still reeks of the old `charity model of disability' rather than the one that empowers people with disability to lead useful lives in dignity!

We need your help, Mr. Modi

This is in the manner of an open letter to Mr. Modi who has swept into power with such impressive support that it appears tht he can do anything he wishes. Sir, I hope to convince you of the desirability of implementing many of my fond hopes, which I have been repeatedly presenting to Government officials in the past, with precious little to show for it.

Basically I want persons with disabilities (PWD, henceforth) to be given a chance to contribute what they can to society, with independence and dignity. For example, I can basically go nowhere without a wheelchair, but I have been blessed to work in an institute with a remarkably sensitive administration which has seen the value of rendering itself accessible to my wheelchair, so I can continue to contribute as effectively as I did before having become a victim of multiple sclerosis; my work has been recognised by such national awards as the S.S. Bhatnagar Award for Mathematics, and Fellowship of all three national science academies. I am saying this just to make the point that surely there are many more people like me.

I wish to appeal to you as someone with the economic sense of not confining 5% of our people to their homes just because of their misfortune in being disabled. Please recognise that it is our environment which disables them.  As against the dubious figure (even less than 3%)  given by the latest census exercise of our country, quite a bit more than 5% of our citizens are sure to have some manner of disability. Surely such a large number of people must contain a non-trivial collection of people who can and will contribute significantly to the growth/betterment of our country if they were not constrained by a society riddled with hurdles and barriers to their being able to even get out of their homes. For this to happen, certain steps must be taken:

1. Buses, trains, metros, planes,..., in short, all forms of public transportation must be modified/re-designed so that a PWD can participate fully in all facets of life, effectively, independently, and be able to lead a fruitful life in dignity just like any other citizen.
2. All buildings/utilities must be forced to be barrier-free and inclusive for ALL people; this means (i) where there are steps, there should also be ramps whose gradients are not so steep as to be unusable by a person on a wheelchair; (ii) all ramps and steps must be equipped with handrails, preferably on both sides; (iii) there must be elevators in buidings which have more than just the ground floor; (iv) there must be signs in braille; (v) all buses/trains/elevators should have announcements so the visibly impaired know when a certain stop/floor has been reached.
3. People must be sensitised to observe rules such as stopping at red lights, and being a little more considerate towards PWD in small but important ways, such as: (i) buses should stop only at bus stops, and NOT for only a few seconds some 50 ft. past the bus stop, (ii) rather than rushing to be first and pushing all else out of the way, wait and give priority to the aged, the infirm,  children and PWD.
4. Please do not give away our country to the automobile user; stop the current tendency to have long stretches of divided highway which are impossible to cross by one on foot or in a wheelchair. Stop our tendency to design cities where growth or improvement is measured only by miles of roads built, with no consideration of the number of fatal accidents. (A majority of the fatalities are pedestrians, largely elderly and infirm - not to mention poor people sleeping on the pavements who are run over by rich people diving their fancy cars in a state of inebriation.)
5. Finally, please ensure passage in Parliament of a suitably re-drafted version of a `Rights for Persons with Disbilities Bill' that was sent to a Standing Committee after the last Government was stalled in its efforts to hurriedly pass it in February by a Congress Party in its dying days. This `stalling' was a result of many right thinking people who used whatever means were available - including sympathetic support from such people as Arun Jaitley (BJP), Kanimozhi (DMK) and Sitaram Yechury (CPI(M)). Please do not make the mistake made by the UPA of only consulting one or two disability activists in Delhi, who do not necessarily always see things the same way as others in the field (from all over India) do!

Please use the power given to you, with great hopes, by a large number of people, to progress in the direction that would be lauded by arguably the greatest Indian from Gujarat, namely the Mahatma fondly called the Father of the Nation.

World MS Day

The reason I am putting up this post now is the slight goof in the way my blog now appears, resulting from my clumsy fingers. Let me try to explain away the complicated previous sentence. It turns out that next wednesday is world MS Day, and the the secretary of local (Chennai, India) chapter of the MS Society of India told me that as Accessibility is the theme for the day, and as my institute is one of the most accessible places she has seen, she asked me if we could conduct the festivities at my institute. She told me that the press would be well represented, and I could try to sell the idea to my director as a way to get free publicity for the institute. I told her that he would let us have the do at IMSc without having to be sold the advertisement angle; it is the inclusivity of his thinking that has allowed me to get the institute to systematically make this entire campus accessible to me on my wheelchair. And I was right: as soon as I asked if we could use the premises for the meeting that day, he came out with his stock answer `take it ya'. And Ann (the secretary of MSSI, Chennai) has prepared a programme for the involving short talks by some seven people on different aspects of accessibility, such as rehabilitation, employment, education, transport, sports for the disabled and welfare schemes). And I have been asked to talk about education. The only thing I can talk about is on my attempts to talk to the powers that be at various institutes and universities that I get invited to talk at - all of which has been faithfully chronicled in this blog - and of the spectacular success my efforts have been met with at my own institute (see the post http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2013/01/my-comfort-zones.html). And as I was trying to get links to various pieces that are related to this effort of mine, an old post from some two years ago somehow hopped to top of the line; and this mini-post is by way of explaining this strange phenomenon to a possibly puzzled follower of my blog!

Ingenuity revisited

Times of India, September 1, 2012


Some time ago, I had written in this column about a stroke of monstrous ingenuity that I had witnessed in the faculty housing at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai - that of having elevators halt halfway between floors, by which amazing stroke of economy, it was ensured that you have to climb up or down half a flight of stairs if ever you take the elevator - God help you if you are wheelchair-bound. This ingenuity of fundamental research was to return to dog me recently in the distant North-East.

In response to a plea from a University there to come and help with `Curriculum Development of their Mathematics Department', I sent my stock response that owing to my mobility problems, I could come only if:

1. I would be driven from the nearest airport to the place where I would be accommodated; and
2. it was ensured that in view of my mobility constraints, the venues of my accommodation as well as of the office where I would need to work were both totally accessible to my wheelchair.

Back came the instant response that all my worries were noted and best efforts were being taken to ensure my comfortable stay. Lured by the prospect of escaping from Chennai in May to the heavenly climes (at least 30 degrees cooler) of the beautiful north-east, with a possible view of the snow-capped Kanchenjunga, I agreed to go.


My hosts had thoughtfully sent a large SUV which would comfortably transport my motorised wheelchair (which I had carted through the airports with some amount of difficulty), my wife, our baggage and me - thereby satisfying my first condition. As for the second, I had been warned that I would need to negotiate a couple of steps at the entrance of the guest house, after which, however, I would have no problems. After negotiating the two steps at the entrance, I entered the guest house to renew my acquaintance with the horror of the half-landing elevator.


My room was next door to and on the same floor as the room where our meetings were to be held; while the dining room was one floor higher. My hosts kindly offered us the option of having our food brought to our room. We did avail this option a few times, but as all the others were eating in the dining hall, it seemed only civil to go up for at least a few meals.


At the end of a gruelingly long day of going over syllabi of courses, we were told that the Vice-Chancellor had invited all the external experts with our families to dinner - which we later discovered was to be at floor -3 in a hotel without an elevator, so it was back to our room for dinner. The next night, we were told that dinner would be slightly delayed - to 9 pm - as the VC was going to join all of us for dinner. With my wife insisting that surely his coming must be related to remorse at my inability to attend the previous evening's dinner, it was time to again hobble down half a flight of stairs then up a floor in the elevator and hobble down another half-flight to get to the dining room. After spending about ninety minutes chatting with the others, we were told that the VC would not be coming after all!

Although I had spent 48 hours in the beautiful North-East without once having stepped out of my maximally inaccessible guest- house, I had the satisfaction of at least having had a spectacular view of Kanchenjunga from the terrace of our guest house, and I achieved my primary purpose in undertaking the gruelling trip, which was to see a friend of mine in Kolkata who was not in the best of health! But the (invisible) VC had his own back by calling my bluff about being constrained to a wheel-chair by making me hobble up and down those stairs a fair number of times, thanks to the fundamental brilliance of his elevator.


In conclusion, I wish to assure my hosts that I do appreciate their sincere attempts to make my stay comfortable, but I also wish to stress that if I had indeed been wheelchair-bound then this trip would have been an unalloyed nightmare!

Nevermore

As the `raven quoth' in Edgar Allen Poe's play, it is hightime that all PWD take a consolidated stand to NEVER attend an event where some organisation (typically a government agency) offers to `honour' one, and then goes on to organise the event in an auditorium which is replete with an abundant supply of steps, with not even an apology of a ramp - in spite of being fully aware that the recipient of this `award' is confined to a wheelchair - and turn this `honor' into a thoroughly dishonourable event where the honouree is asked to either (i) leave the wheel-chair outside and walk `only 20 steps' (sic), or (ii) if the person just cannot walk, carried up like a sack of potatoes. As readers of my blog or newspaper articles know, I have, by now, become a master at disbelieving promises to take good care of you and make my numerous demands clear to my potential host, and then making as public a stink as possible, if my demands have not been met in spite of promising me that they will.

The latest victim of this kind of horrific insensitivity is Abha Khetarpal, who has been an e-friend for long. Here is the background. Abha is in a wheelchair and was one of four women featured in a documentary  movie `Accsex' that boldly tackled the theme of sexuality and people with disabilities. This movie was going to be honoured at the National Film Award Ceremony at Vigyan Bhawan by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee. Abha had been excited for some days about being invited to this event, only to be treated to the usual insensitivity of the officials when such a dignitary is going to be present. These auditoria are crammed full of chairs and the only way a wheel-chair can be accommodated in such a place is in an aisle or right up front in front of the first row - and surely national security considerations could not permit such a potential hazard.

The only thing that will work is for ALL of us to say: if you want us at an event, then hold it where we can come; if you can't do that, you can shove your award where the sun don't shine'.