They come together for bus without barriers

Sathish Kumar’s question to the government is plain and simple : “I spend Rs 15,000 per month for my transport, just because I don't have an accessible public transport system. Why do I need to pay ten times higher than the others, despite having a Central rule and a court judgment supporting my rights?”
This wheelchair-bound, banking professional’s no-nonsense claim to the right to movement and accessibility, is a dogged attempt to be heard, seen and answered, that people with disabilities in Chennai have been fighting for years.Now, they have united in a way that is out for the world online — encompassing civilians, government servants, bureaucrats, working professionals and activists — to see.
‘Bus4All’, a campaign initiated by members of the Disability Rights Alliance, is now a thriving record of first-person testimonials and experiences by people of various age groups and disabilities, expressing with photographs how the city’s public transport system continues to fail them in more ways than one. This comes six months after the Madras high court restrained the State government from adding new buses to its fleet unless they were disabled-friendly, as required by the law.
Seventeen years ago, Rajiv Rajan filed a PIL for MTC bus accessibility, and he says low-floor, level boarding buses are yet to come. “Around 2006, the high court had issued an interim order asking for 10% of the fleet to be accessible. This has still not happened,” says Rajiv. “We are talking about 30% of the population — people with disabilities, senior citizens, pregnant women and any passenger carrying weight — being unable to use buses as they are now. The central government’s deadline for making public spaces accessible for persons with disabilities was June 2022,” says Rajiv.
The Bus4All campaign features about eight stories of people with disabilities, sitting next to a bus, holding placards recounting experiences of falling, virtual house arrests, and forced expenses of taking costlier means of transport. Among them is Smitha Sadasivan.
In the November of 2004, Smitha fell out of a moving bus as she was struggling to hold on to the grab bar during a turning. Her mother, who she was travelling with, also fell off the bus. Fifteen years later, Smitha suffered another fall while attempting to board an MTC bus with a lift at a demo organised at the Disability Commissionerate.
Last month, the state government told the Madras high court that it had received tenders for procurement of 424 low floor buses, which will ply in Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore cities.
“As a disabled person, this will start making a difference to my life only if I don’t have to wait for more than two or three buses, during rush hour, to find one that I can get on to,” says disability rights advocate Vaishnavi Jayakumar. “Less dwell time and more frequency is key. It takes seven minutes for a disabled person to board a bus with a lift. And the public — especially during the rush hour — isn’t willing to wait. Is there enough thought going into these aspects?”