The Accessible India Campaign, launched by the Government of India on the December 3, 2015, seeks to implement India’s obligations under Paras 4.3 of the Incheon Strategy.
The campaign has three main areas of focus: Built environment accessibility, transport system accessibility, and information and communication eco-system accessibility. The targets for build environment accessibility are exclusively in urban areas “ mostly state capitals. With more than 69 percent of persons with disabilities living in the rural areas, this campaign is perhaps ironically named.
Nevertheless, it does make a start, and revisions in the strategy paper have ensured that original plans to limit the number of cities have been altered to include many more. According to the Strategy Paper, 26 buildings in the city of Panaji are to undergo an accessibility makeover during the first phase of the programme, and even more ambitiously, so will five of perhaps the most popular beaches for locals and tourists. (http://disabilityaffairs.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/panaji.pdf). It is hoped that persons with disabilities have themselves decided what government buildings they would prioritise in this campaign, even if they have not really been consulted in how the campaign should be designed as a whole.
The built environment accessibility strategy comes as a great boost to concerted efforts over the years to ensure accessibility of government buildings in the City. The state government had undertaken before the Panaji Bench of the Bombay High Court to make all public buildings accessible by the year 2008, but of course, this is far from implementation.
The execution of this campaign would be extremely interesting to see implemented in Panaji. The city is full of small lanes complicated by elevated terrain. Many of the buildings identified under the campaign are of heritage value, and balancing the existing architecture with the need for accessibility is an interesting challenge, but definitely one that has been dealt with before in other cities with similar rich architectural heritage.
The greater challenge though is the answer to this question: an accessible building is great. But how does one reach there? The public transport system in Goa is in absolute shambles, and it a struggle for even the able bodied commuter or tourist to access. The Goa Tourism website tries to put its own spin on this, clearly written by someone who has never taken a private bus in Goa:
‘Despite the overcrowding, noise and off-schedule service, there is a special charm in travelling in the private buses which are brightly painted and filled with colourful local characters.’
If all goes well with the campaign, by July 2019, 25 percent of government owned public transport carriers in the country would be converted into fully accessible carriers. This is clearly where a ‘one size fits all’ approach to designing accessibility solutions fails for this campaign. This indicator would perhaps be impressive in cities that have strong public transport systems with City transport corporations. By July 2016, all international airports are to be made fully accessible. By July 2019 - A1, A & B categories of railway stations and 50 percent of railway stations in general would be converted into fully accessible locations. The impact of these indicators, even if fulfilled on the public transport system in Goa is absolutely meaningless. The simple question of how someone is to get from a fully functional accessible airport to a fully functional accessible government building is still anyone’s guess.
Accessibility must really be imagined as a point-to-point strategy, and in some cases this might even mean from someone’s bed to their office. In the case of persons facing high restriction in participation, the availability of trained and registered personal assistants, to help with everyday necessities, is something without which any infrastructural breakthrough is rendered meaningless.
Public services must be tested under the parameters of Availability, Accessibility, Affordability, Acceptability and Quality. The census pegs the disabled population in Goa to be at 33,012, far below the UN estimate of 10 percent of any geographical population. From the policy perspective, many stakeholders may find it tedious to make such expensive accommodations for a relatively small number of people. Besides being gross underreporting, this data also does not take into account persons who face impairments that are not yet recognized as disabilities in the Indian context, as well as the elderly, pregnant women, and persons who face temporary restrictions in participation in case of illness. Even for those who do not have a disability of any kind, the tests of Availability, Accessibility, Affordability, Acceptability and Quality are not met at all. It is foreseeable that an experiment like odd-even in Panaji would result in an absolute riot regardless of how noble the motives are “ simple because there is no inter-city transport alternative that satisfies even one of the qualifications mentioned above.
For those working in reform of public infrastructure, the environment, or access to transport, the Accessible India Campaign provides a great opportunity to use the resources and the impetus to force policy changes to enable a sea change in public transportation in cities that have no semblance of it whatsoever. It is well understood that systems that are accessible for persons with disabilities are better for all sections of the population. The campaign must be made more receptive to the unique vulnerabilities of the states and cities it will operate in, and this can be done with the active engagement of civil society and state governments. We could do with more sensitive cities before we make them smarter.
Amba Salelkar is a lawyer working on gender and disability law and policy. She tweets at @MumbaiCentral though she lives between Chennai and Goa and is with the Equals Centre for Promotion of Social Justice
