The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged India’s passenger mobility infrastructure like never before. While the country was already aware of the massive room for improvement, the need for robust transport systems has become all the more obvious today. As India battles the second wave and prepares for a potential third one, the economy is under tremendous stress. The promised V-shaped recovery after the first wave will be a mirage if the country does not find a way to safely regularise movement of people and goods.
The new systems built to regularise mobility must be safe, accessible, reliable and affordable for all, lest the marginalised and the underprivileged find themselves in a progressively worse situation coming out of the pandemic. The 100-million-plus Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) forming India’s largest minority are at risk of just such an outcome.
Safe, accessible, reliable and affordable (SARA) mobility systems are life arteries of an economy. They enable access to various social, educational, employment and healthcare opportunities. PwDs recognise the catalytic power of transport and mobility and have fought hard to make it not just accessible and affordable, but also safe and reliable. As India scrambles to plug holes in its passenger mobility network in the short term, and invest in capacity-building for the long run, it is important to ensure that these measures are disability-inclusive.
More vulnerable
PwDs are particularly vulnerable to the direct health effects of Covid, and at risk of further marginalisation resulting from the wider pandemic response. As delivery slots across e-commerce platforms get full, retail shops operate for limited hours and travel restrictions are instituted, PwDs find it increasingly difficult to safely and independently access essential goods, avail critical banking and insurance services, or even secure medical care.
Unavailability of timely information in an accessible format further constraints PwDs in trip planning. Often, government announcements containing travel restrictions are unaccompanied by sign language videos, thus excluding the deaf and the hard of hearing community. Similarly, persons living with a visual disability are frustrated as the official notifications are issued in a format incompatible with their assistive technology.
Given the just-in-time nature of these announcements, PwDs are often caught unprepared to safely and independently function under ever-changing restrictions. This makes mobility systems unreliable and unsafe, even on the off chance of being accessible and affordable.
For the disabled people who have trained themselves to travel independently, the restrictions are making transport systems unreliable. Persons living with a visual disability, for instance, navigate based on a mental map of say, a train station. As new physical barricades are installed to regulate movement of people, these individuals find it impossible to move about safely and independently. Similarly, as the number of entrances to bus depots and train stations are restricted, persons with locomotor disabilities find themselves alienated when accessible paths are closed.
The overarching lack of SARA mobility has a compounding effect where a disabled person is the primary breadwinner or is supporting their children and elderly parents. It is outrageous for a PwD to find themselves unable to travel for vaccination, all for want of safe, accessible, reliable and affordable transportation. Thus, the mobility restrictions, though well-intended, are reversing decade-long efforts towards independent living for the millions of PwDs.
In the light of a nascent state-sponsored disability support infrastructure, most persons living with a disability have weaved a support network of their own, including friends, family and other members of the local community. People today are finding themselves under increased pressure to manage a variety of domestic and professional responsibilities. Their bandwidth for care-giving, such as driving someone living with a severe disability, is reduced.
The social fabric of this support system has started to unravel in the face of constantly evolving information around Covid vectors and social distancing. Where before the pandemic, one could expect assistance from a kind stranger in safely hailing a rickshaw or boarding the correct bus, such support is becoming distressingly scarce leading to greater isolation. There is a realisation that we are only as strong as our weakest link. A SARA transport system must become the cornerstone of this realisation.
The writer heads the Accessibility & Inclusion track at Ola Mobility Institute.