I am talking about reservation of 2 city bus seats for the senior citizens.
This has come to my mind because today when i was coming home, sitting cozily in one of the "ladies seat" of the bus, lost in my thoughts, a 70-ish gentleman with a walking stick got on the bus. He was having some difficulty standing in the swaying bus. All the seats in the right side of the bus(which are generally occupied by men) were taken. The seat next to mine was empty and the conductor urged the man to sit there for the time being. He didnt. How could he, considering the haughty way, we "ladies" make the men turn these seats to us, irrespective of their age or physical condition. Just then, a "general"(unreserved) seat got vacant and the young guy standing next to this man rush over to take it. Maybe he didnt notice this old man even once.And what nobody in the bus noticed were the 2 seats reserved for senior citizens. It is amazing how regularly the old and the physically challenged are denied even this small privilege in everyday life. more amazing is that we need the government and public bodies and the like to tell us to give away something as little as a citybus seat to those who are physically weaker than us. Where have the values gone? Where is the feeling of compassion? Do they only exist in schoolkids' moral science textbooks these days?
(To the readers: Sorry, writing's not very neat)
3 comments:
Your observations are right.The public support system for physically challenged and aged persons are really poor in India. If i am not wrong, the first public transport service with special care for physically challenged was introduced at the time of a official visit of Stephen Hawking to India.There is lot of scope of improvement in this regard.
There was a time when passengers used to vacant their own seats to ladies and aged person. Now we have official reservation for ladies and aged person.I mean to say that the earlier norms have been changed into rules. but, we all know that rules can be broken but norms cannot be.So the most effective way of implementation could be public encouragement for such activity and we all can contribute in this regard.
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