Accessibility: A mere idealistic cause or a substantive one?

All India Institute of Local Self-Government, in association with the Building Accessible Safe Inclusive Indian Cities(BASIIC) Program implemented by the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) and supported by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office(FCDO), organised an E-Dialogue titled “Building Cities for All – A perspective on disability inclusion in urban development” on 31st January, 2022.

The eminent panel was comprised of Hitesh Vaidya, Director, NIUA; Harpreet Arora, FCDO; Dr Vasudevan, Chief General Manager, Varanasi Smart City; Divya Pillai, Consultant, Bhopal Smart City; Prateek Khandelwal, Founder, RampMyCity; Subhash Chandra Vashishth, Co-founder and Director, Centre for Accessibility in Built Environment Foundation; Utsav Chaudhary, Team Leader (BASIIC), NIUA; and Ravi Ranjan Guru, Deputy Director General, AIILSG.
The e-dialogue commenced with the address from Abhishek Pandey. The main objective of the webinar circled around the differently abled people and that our cities are not inclusive in their context. Stating facts, Pandey mentioned that with 6.5 billion estimated to be urban dwellers by 2050 globally and 900 million in India, inclusivity will be a huge task to cater to. Approximately 15 per cent people living in the cities are differently abled. Leading to the urgency to the UN’s declaration, a poor accessibility presents a major challenge. “We aspire to have a better lifestyle, better economic conditions, and our aspirations leads us to migrate from villages to towns and then towns to cities,” Pandey added.
The population hike in the coming years is a given and so are the problems for the differently abled. Be it access to public servicesor access to public infrastructure the battle remains the same. So as we celebrate 75 years of independence, we need to be more focused towards catering to the demands of the differently abled and make cities more inclusive for them and not just for the people who can navigate and who are capable.
Hitesh Vaidya, who was present for an inaugural address said that cities are engines of economic growth, if they are being supported by the pillars of inclusion and sustainability. “Moving ahead in time, we are not left with just one engine, we have triple engine strategies for progress. There is no point of having the solutions written unless we start talking about them in the air,” he said. NIUA has developed policy briefs, tools, and also come out with harmonised guidelines that are the draft guidelines which will be now notified soon after the stakeholder discussion and they will entail information on how to capacitate the states and cities and how to bring inclusion in drafting the cities, he added.
The next speaker, Harpreet Arora spoke on Improving diversity and Inclusion in Indian cities and role of FCDO. Becoming inclusive is to include people from all ages and categories. FCDO’s perspective lies in localising all the efforts. “Aspects of urban development have to be more spread out and more local,” he said. In 2018, the first summit was held in the set for these activities with list of commitments, delimiting discrimination, building leadership and economic empowerment. The Government of India should be given much appreciation for the same.India has already taken huge steps in drafting the most comprehensive legislation that the world has to know, the departments and ministries, their positive action and waving off discrimination is something to be appreciated so far, he said.
Dr Vasudevan presented his ideas next on Strategies for Building Universally Accessible and Inclusive Cities, the activities launched through BASIIC partnership which was materialised by NIUA in April 2020. Varanasi, as a smart city, has been consistent with its work even during the period of the pandemic. There were series of webinars and lectures and consultation concerning disability inclusion. To name a few activities out of many in Varanasi, which were carried out to make it easier for people with disability to navigate with ease includes, construction of accessible ghat area, accessible walkways, well designed traffic intersection, ramp to access the river, accessible mode of transport, accessible ATM, etc.,
he added.
Divya Pillai continued the discussion and informed about the activities of Bhopal Smart City. Bhopal has been proactive in designing projects keeping in mind the livability index of the city. In Bhopal city, a separate team has been dedicated to this cause, which purely works on a data driven approach, where the projects are designed in such a way that disability inclusion holds a major spot. In the place making projects which started in 2018, they developed vertical project which was totally inclined towards maintaining a happy and inclusive index in the cities for the disabled people, she added.
Prateek Khandelwal discussed about India’s problem of inaccessibility for the disabled. There have been plethora of campaigns and policy framework leveraged by the Government of India but where do they seem to be working? “Retrofitting of the buildings is a huge challenge in India because of how fast we are growing as a nation. If we try to have a bird’s eye view of the situation there are certain aspects that make a city inclusive. The cities are divided in public and private sector and all the services entailed in both the sectors should be accessible for not just an able bodied individual but for the disabled population as well because that’s what equality is” he added.
There are spaces which leave no room for the disabled community to navigate as the disability factor has not been considered. For instance, Brigade Road in Bengaluru has insufficient width between bollards for wheelchairs /prams to pass through. “Accessibility is seen just an idealistic cause as nothing has been done substantially on the ground,” he added. RampMyCity is changing the current phenomenon that accessibility is a big bang idea, no, it is not. Because if the structural changes are made with accessibility for the disabled and other vulnerable communities in mind then the scenario can be a lot different. The way to do it is make accessibility a mainstream, a popular concept, he added.
Subash Chandra Vashishth expressed his thoughts and said that the policy centering around housing is what needs reconsideration. “Disability inclusion cannot be achieved by working in just one sphere, much more needs to be done,” he mentioned. The policy frameworks have to be audited and assessed and create a mechanism to receive feedback on them. According to him, our standards are very West driven and integrated without considering their adaptability. He said that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility is mostly left out in many areas, which normally considers smartness of cities and not the accessibility; this requires harmonised ICT guidelines.
Utsav Chaudhary, while taking the discussion ahead, highlighted what Pandey also mentioned about the joy and gratitude of disability inclusion. He expressed that cities we live in have an intrinsic value for everyone. But the freedom that we get in our respective cities is what matters the most. The core of inclusion should prevail in all spheres. Building safe and inclusive city is based on the pillars that are streamlining of the legislative framework and guidelines of disability. Besides this a body of knowledge, BASIIC was needed to implement critical enablers for the larger aim, i.e., disability inclusion. The established body works towards ‘changing perception through awareness and a robust evaluation system’, he added.
In the concluding session, Ravi Ranjan Guru summed up the proceedings. He provided the key takeaways from the webinar, mentioning that the crux of this effort is building sensitive and responsive cities. It is necessary to collect evidence on city’s perception towards universal design and inclusive practices through process of Training Needs Assessment (TNA). Emphasising on the e-course on “Fundamentals of Disability Inclusion” AIILSG initiatives were directed towards producing rich knowledge products and reports on Citizen’s Perception on Disability Inclusion, providing training
to officials.