Blindness beaten, now bureaucracy... MAN ON A MISSION

 Mohammed Asif Iqbal in his Sector V office. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

DEBRAJ MITRA, TT, Aug 05, 2018, New Town: A 41-year-old man who didn't let blindness come in the way of his achieving academic and career goals has now set his mind on fighting bureaucracy to make reserved parking for people with disabilities the norm in public places.

Mohammed Asif Iqbal, an associate director of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Calcutta, has been meeting whoever he thinks can be of help as part of a campaign he started two years ago and won't give up on.

Asif had visited Mamata Banerjee's residence in Kalighat in August last year, although he didn't get to meet her. He left a letter addressed to the chief minister with a police officer in her security detail and is still waiting for a response.

A few months before that, Asif had met the Trinamul MP and Harvard professor Sugata Bose to give voice to what he feels is the right of every person with disability.

In a letter to the chief minister after Asif met him, Bose said the young man "makes a compelling case for dedicated handicapped parking in public places, as is the norm in most advanced cities and towns".

Metro has a copy each of Asif's letter to Mamata and the one in which Bose appears to back his initiative.

"Ramps are built to make a building or compound disabled-friendly. But dedicated parking slots sound like a foreign concept to most people. There are VIP parking slots everywhere, though," Asif said.

The trigger for his mission was a visit to the headquarters of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in April 2016. "I was to meet someone there and my driver was unable to find a place to park the vehicle anywhere nearby. I was forced to walk more than a kilometre through New Market to reach the civic headquarters. I realised that day what a big problem this is, more so for someone with a disability," he recounted.

Asif was born in Bhagalpur, Bihar, with impaired vision that kept deteriorating as he grew. He lost his sight completely before he was 16. "I was then living with my uncle in the US, where people with blindness and other disabilities don't usually face the problems that they would encounter in India," he said.

It was after Asif returned to India after completing school in Oregano - he was in the US for around a decade - that he realised how disabled-friendly public amenities there make life easier for such people.

"There are clear guidelines that have to be followed without exception. A minimum number of parking slots - it varies according to the size of the parking area - are reserved for persons with disabilities. Obstructions are removed and the access ways are well lit. Clear signage, along with Braille equivalents, line public areas," Asif said.

Back home, he feels disturbed that little thought is given to how people with disabilities go about their lives. "Stations like Howrah and Sealdah that are used by lakhs of people every day don't have accessible parking for anyone with a disability," he said. "Imagine a person with crutches having to get off a car and walk 200 steps before he reaches a ramp or a lift," Asif said.

While the architecture of some of the older buildings is a challenge, what pains Asif is that "there is hardly any discussion on the topic in Calcutta, which prides itself on being a city with a heart".

Prejudices and roadblocks are not new to Asif, though. After failing to clear an annual school examination in Bhagalpur, he remembers some teachers saying he did not have a future.

On his return from the US, he again studied in India and became the first blind commerce graduate from St Xavier's College. He was denied admission to some MBA coaching institutes because the courses were purportedly "not designed for people like me". Asif did not give up and earned an MBA degree from Symbiosis, Pune.

A PIL he filed in 2000 was instrumental in creating reservation for people with disabilities in the IIMs.

If anything frustrates him, it is how his mission has unfolded so far. "I believe the chief minister has yet to see my letter. It must have been buried under a heap of files. The moment she sees it, I think I will get an audience with her," Asif said.

He is not unfamiliar with how government projects are implemented in India and the time it takes to get something done. As an employee of PwC India, he is involved in digital accessibility initiatives with the Centre and state governments. He has assisted in making the Aadhaar project inclusive and the process of filing online income tax returns more disabled-friendly.

Asif has already prepared a concept note for the parking project that he hopes will work out in Bengal someday. According to him, such a project requires multiple stakeholders like the municipal corporation, the police and the ministry of social welfare.

Quest and South City malls have a few slots reserved for wheelchair users in their parking lots, but Asif envisions something more comprehensive.

Rights activist Sayomdeb Mukherjee, who uses a wheelchair, said apathy was the root of the problem. "Our roads, footpaths, buildings - the entire ecosystem lacks an effort to bring people with disabilities into the mainstream. Barrier-free architecture is a distant dream and parking lots are just an extension of the challenge," he said.

Sayomdeb said he was in talks with the police to introduce stickers to identify cars belonging to people with disabilities so that they get parking in public places like the airport, railway stations, government offices and malls.

For Asif, the use of technology makes up for the things that blindness has denied him. Sitting in his glass cabin at the Sector V office of PwC, Asif works on a laptop with voice-recognition software and replies to messages on his iPhone using an artificial intelligence app.

It's often hard to tell, especially for someone who doesn't know, that Asif cannot see. But he sees the future for people with disabilities, and he will play a role in it for sure.