A friend of mine spoke about Punarbhava.in – a website for the disabled people by the Government of India. The friend described the site as “one of the the most well designed ’sarkaari’ website” he had eve seen. I could not agree more.

Run jointly by Rehabilitation Council of India, the website features a comprehensive resource centre for the disabled. So there is a blog, and online chat facility, a discussion forum, a disability register and even a court.

Dr AK Sinha of the Rehabilitation Council of India, said the site will

“consolidate and disseminate all the information the government has on people with disabilities”.

 

“And people looking for assistive devices - for example someone who has a hearing impairment wants to know when someone is knocking on his door while he sleeps - can find out where to buy such an instrument from the site,”

The website had various sections. Each one having its own comprehensive list of subsections. So, “Resources” had, as its sub-sections, “Documentary and Films”, “Publications” and “Institutions”. Putting the cursor on any one of these, branches out still another set of sub-sub-sections.

The information given on the website, from International journals to the list of institutions with addresses, sorted out state-wise to the census data is quite exhaustive.

For long there have been discussions on creating the “disabled-friendly”, hospitals, libraries, modes of transport, platforms, supermarkets and just about everyplace. While formal policies were formulated for many of these, very little action, if ever, was taken anywhere.

Punarbhava.in is a welcome step in this direction. With time, I see a lot of user generated material being added to the website making it a platform for anyone who has anything to say, ask or contribute to the disabled.

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