Why Are Indian Buildings Unfriendly to the Physically Challenged?

We voted today. The booths were set up in a big high school. As I crossed the gate, I started to watch for obstacles that would defeat me if I tried to take my 99 year old mother to vote later on. She is wheel chair bound. I know, I cannot ask a poor, harassed Election Commission to worry about everything; but, what about the school? Did it not provide for students on wheel-chairs?  Is it not the duty of officials to ensure access to the classroom for every student, even if only five in a thousand required wheel chairs? And what do you do if a teacher has an accident and ends up requiring a wheel chair? Embarrass him/her into leaving the job and go away?

There was a stretch of loose sand about 25 meters across, from the gate to the school building – I decided that my mother’s wheel chair would not negotiate that. What about ramps? There was one at the end of the stretch of sand.

However, as I went into the building, I saw there was no way to get a wheel chair to the voting booths without physically carrying the wheel chair with my mother in it over three big steps. I gave up. 

Forget the public buildings and the voting! Can my mother visit a wheel chair friendly temple? I have been planning to take her to the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD)  in Malleswaram.

That temple has a lift. Logical, I thought. It is people above sixty that think more about the lord! They think of him even more after they reach seventy! And it is then they find they cannot negotiate dozens of steps! Unfortunately, every time I have enquired, a staff member tells me that the lift is “under repair”.

Sixty seven years of independence are not enough to make our public buildings accessible to the physically challenged; and temples are the most unfriendly buildings to the old.

Srinivasan Ramani