For Gautam Dey and Sourav Purkait, both visually challenged para-athletes, Durga Puja has always been about the sounds and smells that it brings.
Last week, when they, along with 13 other para-athletes, decided to go pandal hoping, they were prepared to deal with the difficulties they would encounter while entering crowded pandals without ramps and wheelchairs.
Adequate facilities
Like earlier years, the para-athletes feared that they would be turned away from majority of the puja pandals in absence of adequate facilities for them.
Much to their surprise, Mr. Dey and Mr. Purkait were turned away at only two of the 11 pandals they visited during the course of the evening.
“At Dum Dum Park Bharat Chakra, not only were we assisted by the volunteers, but also helped by the organisers, who, realising that I was blind, explained the theme of the puja pandal to me. With the sounds and smells of the pandal and I could imagine the entire ambience,” Mr. Dey, a 27-year-old para-footballer, told The Hindu.
Are Kolkata’s Durga Pujas becoming more inclusive by improving access to persons with disabilities?
Abhirupa Kar, the secretary of Civilian Welfare Foundation (CWF), an organisation that has been carrying out surveys on disabled-friendly arrangements at major puja pandals in Kolkata for the past six years, said the situation is improving.
According to Ms. Kar, there has been a gradual improvement between 2013 and 2016, and a significant improvement in the past one year.
Facilities improved
In terms of overall disabled-friendly access, which includes wheelchair presence, accessibility ramps and assistance by volunteers of the puja committees, the survey revealed that from 29% pandals in 2016, the figure has gone up to 45% in 2017.
The members of CWF pointed out that in 2013, when they started the survey, the overall disabled-friendly access was not there at even 7% of the puja pandals.
This year’s survey revealed that wheelchair availability improved from 43% in 2016 to 67% in 2017 and presence of ramps went up from 21.42% in 2016 to 67% in 2017.
More efforts needed
“It is not that the para-athletes were welcome everywhere. At one community puja, a para-athlete had to crawl her way to the pandal in absence of wheelchairs. But the statistics this year clearly show that the disabled-friendly arrangements at Durga Puja pandals have increased,” said Ms. Kar.
This year, the Kolkata Police had also come up with a Braille guide for the visually challenged, which was welcomed by activists working with the differently-abled.