This morning is the first Saturday morning of my `post-retirement life', and I can already see myself becoming one of those grumpy old scrooges who gets irritated with everything. Something to do with people not letting me lead my life the way I want to, constantly asking me to update my life and then rendering it unrecognisable and unfriendly. Let me do a slow rewind, starting with `the stone-ages' and fast-forwarding to today's land of highways and information fast lanes.
When I finished a masters degree 44 years ago and went to foreign shores to do my doctoral work, I flew in a plane for the first time from a country where there was no television; where bicycling from home to the place of study (school or institute) was normal and feasible under half an hour; it was not uncommon to find a home with no phone; if you wanted information not available in your text books, then you cycled to a library, you had to find a plausible source of the desired information, possibly in the `reference section', and then copy down the desired information in a note-book - Xerox machines were still a decade away; and if you wanted to communicate with somebody in a different city or country, you had to write a letter, mail it, and await your response which could take some weeks to come. Despite this seemingly unnecessary self-denial, it did teach you to write well in order to communicate clearly and unambiguously. You did not say `how r u' or `lol' or `wtf'; these abbreviations are abrasive, often rude, and lead to entirely unwarranted misunderstandings - especially when they make up the fabric of conversation between people of different generations with different ideas about acceptable norms of behaviour! My first book was written in (an India-USA) collaboration with my (already former) thesis advisor in that era of `snail mail'; but thanks to his being from a generation which constantly honed its correspondence skills, that is probably my only totally error-free book.
With the advent of computers, much less time is spent on real work - what with constant beeps announcing some `notification' or the other that only serve to take your mind off what it was (and should have been) involved with; and the death of the reading habit was slow and inevitable. (How many kids of today even visit libraries; even book shops and libraries are inevitably filling their shelves with electronic items at the cost of books. When mobile phones first made their appearance, I postponed getting (dependent on) one for as long as possible, convinced they only lead to waste of time. When it could be postponed no further, I got one of those old thin and small phones you could hold and operate with one hand, where you used the phone keys for texting with `1' yielding `a',`b' or `c', with the `prediction' option kicking in as you typed more of the word.
This smartness seems to force you to (a) use large phones which do not fit easily into a hand or a pocket, (b) use two hands to receive a phone call, and (c) generally make the act of using a phone when vertical difficult if you have balance problems like I do. Also using the small QWERTY keyboard is tough if you have clumsy fingers like I do, so sending/responding to text messages is a major hassle. Then came smart phones which outsmart you by periodically asking, nay, persistently demanding that you `update' (now/overnight/later) your phone and revealing its new avatar after uploading, with many of the old options replaced by new and sometimes unfriendly ones! You can't keep on opting for `later' because the frequency of these demands increase exponentially, and eventually something does not work because you have an `old version'!
There is a pattern, in all walks of life, to this frantic desire for modernisation. For instance, the government tells you they will improve infrastructure (read `roads' - even though at least two people die every month due to going into the shit-filled sewers of our cities to try and de-clog them). Instead, they will try to widen roads, chewing up any pavement on those infrequent occasions when they might have existed; then they will build a road separator, which will keep growing taller periodically, thus ensuring people cannot cross the streets; then they will remove all intersections and pedestrian crossings, thus ensuring that senior citizens or people with mobility problems can live in the cities only if they can travel in private cars; then they will threaten to build monster flyovers spanning several miles, whose construction will shamelessly and irreversibly cut down trees everywhere and reduce green cover. Never mind: just turn up the air-conditioner in your car!
What my mood needed to go over the top was this email from my DRA friends about
NITI Aayog's three Year Action Plan for Persons with Disabilities
http://enabled.in/wp/niti-aayogs-three-year-action-plan-for-persons-with-disabilities/
The document talks about making a section of each class room accessible as per universal design standards in next 3 years. 3 years and just one section in each class room? It also mentions making just 10,000 buildings accessible in the next 3 full years?? Including the plan made under Accessible India Campaign that is been carried out so far?
Secondly no mention about any new programs like personal assistant program or supported decision making units. No attempt for the appointment/deputation of an inclusion focal point within NITI Ayog.
Last but most importantly, the action plan PDF as released by NITI Aayog, which is attached alongside, is not accessible for persons with print disabilities.
Yes Pradhan Mantriji, this report will go a long way in assuring your favourite Divyangjan that there is positive probability that your ministry may manage, by the year 2100, to have one school that is truly accessible and manage to maintain a state-of-the-art Resource Centre, be a repository of research on good governance and best practices in sustainable and equitable development as well as help their dissemination to stake-holders (point no. 10 in the stated `Functions' of this organisation according to Wikipedia).
When I finished a masters degree 44 years ago and went to foreign shores to do my doctoral work, I flew in a plane for the first time from a country where there was no television; where bicycling from home to the place of study (school or institute) was normal and feasible under half an hour; it was not uncommon to find a home with no phone; if you wanted information not available in your text books, then you cycled to a library, you had to find a plausible source of the desired information, possibly in the `reference section', and then copy down the desired information in a note-book - Xerox machines were still a decade away; and if you wanted to communicate with somebody in a different city or country, you had to write a letter, mail it, and await your response which could take some weeks to come. Despite this seemingly unnecessary self-denial, it did teach you to write well in order to communicate clearly and unambiguously. You did not say `how r u' or `lol' or `wtf'; these abbreviations are abrasive, often rude, and lead to entirely unwarranted misunderstandings - especially when they make up the fabric of conversation between people of different generations with different ideas about acceptable norms of behaviour! My first book was written in (an India-USA) collaboration with my (already former) thesis advisor in that era of `snail mail'; but thanks to his being from a generation which constantly honed its correspondence skills, that is probably my only totally error-free book.
With the advent of computers, much less time is spent on real work - what with constant beeps announcing some `notification' or the other that only serve to take your mind off what it was (and should have been) involved with; and the death of the reading habit was slow and inevitable. (How many kids of today even visit libraries; even book shops and libraries are inevitably filling their shelves with electronic items at the cost of books. When mobile phones first made their appearance, I postponed getting (dependent on) one for as long as possible, convinced they only lead to waste of time. When it could be postponed no further, I got one of those old thin and small phones you could hold and operate with one hand, where you used the phone keys for texting with `1' yielding `a',`b' or `c', with the `prediction' option kicking in as you typed more of the word.
This smartness seems to force you to (a) use large phones which do not fit easily into a hand or a pocket, (b) use two hands to receive a phone call, and (c) generally make the act of using a phone when vertical difficult if you have balance problems like I do. Also using the small QWERTY keyboard is tough if you have clumsy fingers like I do, so sending/responding to text messages is a major hassle. Then came smart phones which outsmart you by periodically asking, nay, persistently demanding that you `update' (now/overnight/later) your phone and revealing its new avatar after uploading, with many of the old options replaced by new and sometimes unfriendly ones! You can't keep on opting for `later' because the frequency of these demands increase exponentially, and eventually something does not work because you have an `old version'!
There is a pattern, in all walks of life, to this frantic desire for modernisation. For instance, the government tells you they will improve infrastructure (read `roads' - even though at least two people die every month due to going into the shit-filled sewers of our cities to try and de-clog them). Instead, they will try to widen roads, chewing up any pavement on those infrequent occasions when they might have existed; then they will build a road separator, which will keep growing taller periodically, thus ensuring people cannot cross the streets; then they will remove all intersections and pedestrian crossings, thus ensuring that senior citizens or people with mobility problems can live in the cities only if they can travel in private cars; then they will threaten to build monster flyovers spanning several miles, whose construction will shamelessly and irreversibly cut down trees everywhere and reduce green cover. Never mind: just turn up the air-conditioner in your car!
What my mood needed to go over the top was this email from my DRA friends about
NITI Aayog's three Year Action Plan for Persons with Disabilities
http://enabled.in/wp/niti-aayogs-three-year-action-plan-for-persons-with-disabilities/
The document talks about making a section of each class room accessible as per universal design standards in next 3 years. 3 years and just one section in each class room? It also mentions making just 10,000 buildings accessible in the next 3 full years?? Including the plan made under Accessible India Campaign that is been carried out so far?
Secondly no mention about any new programs like personal assistant program or supported decision making units. No attempt for the appointment/deputation of an inclusion focal point within NITI Ayog.
Last but most importantly, the action plan PDF as released by NITI Aayog, which is attached alongside, is not accessible for persons with print disabilities.
Yes Pradhan Mantriji, this report will go a long way in assuring your favourite Divyangjan that there is positive probability that your ministry may manage, by the year 2100, to have one school that is truly accessible and manage to maintain a state-of-the-art Resource Centre, be a repository of research on good governance and best practices in sustainable and equitable development as well as help their dissemination to stake-holders (point no. 10 in the stated `Functions' of this organisation according to Wikipedia).
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