The need for Accessibility Standards is no remote island to discover, yet as a nation we are still struggling in the 21 Century to understand its importance.
While we have well defined guidelines for almost every area of Spatial Planning, but then, do we have the intention to implement such recommendations?
What most of us ignore is that, accessible infrastructure is not only for Older People and people with special needs, it impacts all of us. Be it our schools, hospitals, offices, metro stations, railway stations we all visit these places and are directly affected by the planning.
In my opinion the most important area for accessibility is the approach to transportation systems, because without accessible travel it gets difficult for people to move out of their neighborhood as their movement gets restricted to their own house or probably the neighborhood parks.
The larger point of debate is, while the metro and railway stations are accessible but then the approach to reach them are mostly unplanned or inaccessible.
Sharing a picture of the approach to the lift of a metro station as an example, while it’s great to have operational lifts in public places in India that too with minimum grafite and beetle nut stains, however the question of users civic sense is still a question mark.
It is easy to blame the system for lack of planning or unplanned development, but then are we citizens not a part of the country? Till when will we remain armchair critics without lifting a finger and not participate in the larger landscape to do our part?
Pankaj Mehrotra
