Beyond Wankhede: Can Sachin take up the cause of the differently abled?

Sachin Tendulkar’s mother will get to see his last hurrah in Test cricket, and will be going to the stadium for the first time. Earlier, she would listen to the commentary and later moved on to watching the live telecast of his performances. Her visit to the stadium has been made possible by building a ramp to access the box. The Indian Express reported the details about how Tendulkar wanted it done since her wheel chair wouldn’t fit the existing lift and he wasn’t happy with the temporary ramp set up. Such considerations are touching with an official saying “We will make sure everything is taken care of”. Facilitating a proud mother’s first visit to a stadium to see her son’s last Test appearance is indeed a true courtesy to the Indian cricket legend. Trying to cause minimum inconvenience to her is at the crux of the effort. No one should grudge Tendulkar or his mother that. Now imagine any other person with a ticket, but some physical disability trying to get in and find a seat in the stands. Not just at Wankhede but almost any other sports arena in the country. The best of enthusiasts would not venture to visit them because they are not disabled-friendly. [caption id=“attachment_1189749” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sachin has ensured all facilities are in place for his mother to visit Wankhede. PTI[/caption] I recall the case of Maharashtra’s former finance minister, Jayant Patil who had broken both his legs on a personal trip to Puttaparthi. A car accident had done him in and he was dependent on crutches for months. The poor man had difficulty entering his work place, Mantralaya. A ramp was built in the public building so he could easily access the lift on the ground floor. When it was his turn to present the Finance Bill, they built a ramp right from the entry into the Assembly down to the well, and made a rostrum available to him at the aisle’s end. The government’s work had to proceed uninterrupted. Before the ramp was put up, disabled government employees (there is a quota to be filled for them under the rules)  had to struggle to get in. Colleagues obviously helped them up a bit. Their concerns at Mantralaya or in any government building hardly impinged on the conscience of the authorities. How accessible are public spaces, including the most important ones to the differently abled? Take for instance, how each commuter train making up the metropolitan Mumbai’s lifeline has a section reserved for the handicapped. Well placed indicators help you locate the spot from a distance. But how does one get to the platform? Hardly a single station is at the road level. Not a single station provides easy access to them without passengers having to use the foot over bridges. The handicapped segment of a coach did not have a low floor and the train halts so briefly that an effort would be futile. Two years ago, an Indian Railways official in Bangalore told The Hindu how there was “ no provision” to help the handicapped cross platforms. The newspaper wrote, “He merely said: ‘There is no provision. The wheelchair user will have to come to the right platform.’” That is the story of any railway station in the country. The same news item had a photograph alongside of MLA Eeshanna Gulagannanavar being lifted into the Vidhan Soudha, wheel chair and all. Obviously he was not important enough as Jayant Patil was with a temporary handicap. Ordinary but handicapped persons are not important enough to be given proper facilities to access places. Theatres, colleges, schools, are endowed with this handicap which does not help people with physical problems. Students suffer too. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 requires  children who are physically challenged to have the right to free education, but poor physical infrastructure discourages them. We tend to be politically correct by calling a blind person visually impaired, a lame person specially or differently abled, or physically challenged, and think our task is done, while it is just empty words. Respect is delivered not by such usage but actually rendering access to all facilities. A visit to any public space would show how they are inaccessible to this particular section of citizenry. The gap between need and provision is so huge that it barely forms part of a statistic. It shows how, notwithstanding the Persons With Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995, no one just cares. Such denial of facilities implies discrimination against the disadvantaged.  It emerges from two things: not providing facilities under the relevant statutes, apparently under the belief that they may not be numerically big enough to warrant them. Even an ordinary street is kept unfriendly to all, including the differently abled. A broken sidewalk, a kerb too high to negotiate is a crisis for a differently abled individual. Imagine walking with crutches on a footpath with uneven paving. The tip can get caught in a crack and leading to hurt. This lackadaisical attitude actually amounts to a denial of a right to safety, if not comfort. The frustrations of differently abled persons are best understood only those who are differently abled. They have ordinary issues which are challenges to the common man. The fact that being insular to their needs is denying them their freedoms is lost on everyone. Here, we are not even talking children who start with other constraints like being visually impaired, slow learners, and attention deficit hyperactive (ADHD), and the autistic who are routinely even denied  admission in schools. They normally are turned away on the pretext of not having seats. We are, as is clear to me, a country of people actually inimical to this class of people and heap barriers in their way. If only Jayant Patil who faced it, had learnt from his temporary crisis to raise the consciousness of the public authorities and not just overcome it by using public funds, he may have done a service. Maybe, if Tendulkar expands his concern to a wider platform, and ropes in people like Union Minister Jaipal Reddy, who needs crutches even to rise from a chair, perhaps a good campaign could get underway. We sorely need it. With less cricket on his mind, and a term to complete in Rajya Sabha, Tendulkar may well have some good work ahead of him.