21 new disabilities recognised by Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill
“I stopped travelling by train,” said Mrunal Nakashe. “In case, I want to travel to places outside Mumbai, I prefer travelling by airlines,” added Nakashe, who was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy in his childhood and uses crutches to move around.
Nakashe took this decision in 2013-14 after he realised that travelling by trains even for short distance in Metro is not getting smoother for him. This is same in case of the 1.6 crore people who are inflicted with locomotor disabilities (this figure is as per Rehabilitation Council of India, 2000 report). The number is still huge if you consider the other forms of disabilities.
As per Census 2011 in India, out of the 121 crore population, about 2.68 crore persons are ‘disabled’ which is 2.21 per cent of the total population. But this figures could go up further as the new bill—‘The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill – 2016’ recognises 21 different disabilities.
[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””]1. Blindness, 2. Low-vision, 3. Leprosy cured persons, 4. Hearing impairment, 5. Locomotor disability, 6. Dwarfism, 7. Intellectual disability, 8. Mental illness, 9. Autism, 10. Cerebral palsy, 11. Muscular dystrophy, 12. Chronic neurological conditions, 13. Specific learning disabilities, 14. Multiple sclerosis, 15. Speech and language disability, 16. Thalassemia, 17. Hemophilia, 18. Sickle cell disease, 19. Multiple disabilities including deaf blindness, 20. Acid attack victim, 21. Parkinson’s disease.[/alert]
“The new law is there but not much of it has been implemented,” said Rajive Raturi, director, Disability Rights Initiative, Human Rights Law Network (HRLN). He is the petitioner in a PIL filed in Supreme Court. The court has realised the amount of laxity on the part of Central Co-ordination Committee (CCC) (that is supposed to review the implementation of provisions of PWD Act) for not holding a meeting for nearly four years since 2012. In 2016, when the committee met briefly they decided to set the tone for a meeting in the near future based on a comprehensive agenda to be drawn for discussion. “I am hoping that some amount of work will take place this year,” added Raturi.
Additionally, CCC is also supposed to examine implementation of Accessible India Campaign. The deadline of the campaign have been extended until 2019, stated Raturi.
The campaign website states target for conducting accessibility audit of all the international airports and converting them into fully accessible international airports was July 2016.
“Most of the international airports are accessible but airports in tier II cities and other small cities are still not accessible,” stated Nakashe.
Commenting about appetite to provide accessible amenities, CEO and MD of ThyssenKrupp, Ravi Kirpalani said, “It is the mind-set. If you look at the total cost of the airport and then in that what would be the extra cost of providing that extra facility for the differently abled is probably insignificant. It is about mind set; lack of awareness and lack of integrating that into the planning.”
Compared to airline traffic growth (12-13 per cent), railway traffic is flat but Railways needs to upgrade itself more urgently in mass transit system.
He further added that the spin-off that you will see from airports to even railways and metro stations could be huge. “Railways are trying to remodel its stations and metro stations is a classy example (of such spin-offs). As they come up, other transport system will learn from the success of the airport on what it takes to make it much more accessible. This will ripple to other mass transit systems.”
