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?