Disability touches all our lives, whether through injury, age, or life's unpredictable turns. Yet, accessibility remains a conversation too often centered on limitations rather than empowerment. How can we move beyond retrofitting solutions to creating a world where inclusivity is a way of life?
In this episode, Parmesh Shahani speaks to Nidhi Goyal and Apoorv Kulkarni. Nidhi is a stand-up comedian, disability and gender rights activist, and founder of Rising Flame; and Apoorv is a researcher, policy advocate, and head of OMI Foundation. (He's also Nidhi's husband.) Together, they bring a wealth of experience and insight to the fight for disability inclusion, emphasising representation, policy reform, and the need for systemic change.
Nidhi and Apoorv share their perspectives on creating inclusive environments, the challenges and successes of advocacy, and the vital role of media in shaping perceptions. They explore how accessibility impacts every facet of life and discuss practical steps to foster inclusion in workplaces, public spaces, and policies.
Tune in to discover how we can all contribute to co-creating a society that values dignity, potential, and the flourishing of all its members.
Learn more about the Godrej DEI Lab and our work at https://www.godrejdeilab.com/.
Our Guests:
Nidhi Goyal
Apoorv Kulkarni
Find the Lab on social media:
Instagram
Linkedin
Email us at godrejdeilab@godrejinds.com /
This is a Maed In India Production; check us out at www.maedinindia.in
Creative Director: Mae Mariyam Thomas
Project Manager: Shaun Fanthome
Head of Audio Production: Kartik Kulkarni
Producer: Meghna Gulati
Sound Editing & Mixing: Nihar Temkar
From the Godrej DEI Lab, welcome to India Included. Here's your host, Parmesh Shahani.
Hi everyone and welcome to the first episode of the best podcast you'll ever listen to: India Included, and you're with me, your host, Parmesh Shahani. I head the Godrej DEI Lab, where we try, in different ways, to make our Godrej Industries group of companies, as well as very ambitiously, India at large, more inclusive - and on this podcast, I'm going to be talking to a galaxy of stars in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion universe - all of who are making a difference in their own way. Do listen to ALL episodes - I promise you, it's going to change your life. #no pressure
Acha, so a couple of months before this recording, I tried to get out of bed one day and I just couldn't. There was too much pain. I had ruptured a disc in my back. Forget the kitchen or the bathroom: I couldn't even get to my front door to open it when help arrived. It took days of agony lying flat on the bed, weeks of appointments and meds, and months of physiotherapy before I could resume something like my normal life. My physiotherapist, Dr Sunita - love you, is now my BFF.
I'm much better now. But you know, while lying in bed, and suffering, I realised that disability - whether permanent or temporary - does not come with an on/off switch, or a warning bell. So when we make our environments accessible - our offices, homes, meeting spaces, our public spaces - it's for all of us, because we will all encounter disability at some point in our life, whether it's through age, or injury, or something else. That's as true of our intellectual abilities as our physical ones.
Now if after listening to me, you're thinking of ramps and Braille buttons in lifts, that's all great, all of it is totally needed. But what I'm also talking about is also a shift in mindsets that allows us to co-create an equal ground, so that people with disabilities can not only co-exist, but also flourish just like non-disabled people do.
We talk a lot about “reasonable accommodations” for people with disabilities - that's a legal term for how to retrofit an unfriendly environment so it can be accessed by all. But what if we could go beyond this? What if we stop seeing accessibility as a solution for one set of people, but rather as a way of life for everyone?
I want to ask these questions, and many more, to my friends on this podcast today and I can't tell you how excited I am to kickstart this first season of India Included with them.
Nidhi Goyal, stand-up comedian, stand-up individual, who's now sitting down and looking very very pretty in pink floral, Founder of the disability advocacy group Rising Flame, and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of everything that makes her an icon - also best gift giver. Apoorv Kulkarni, researcher, the Head of the Center at the OMI Foundation, which used to be called the Ola Mobility Institute, Presidential Awardee, Stanford graduate. They're married, they're in love, and together, they are already changing India, and the world.
Welcome Nidhi and Apoorv to India included. I'm so happy to have this conversation with both of you.
Thank you, Parmesh. Pleasure being here.
Thank you, Parmesh, that's such a warm welcome. So excited to be here.
Thank you for braving the weather, for going through such tumultuous flights, and a lot of drama to get to us. I'm so happy to just be hanging out with you in person. And I want to start off by asking you about your love story, because you know, why not?
So many people have asked these questions to us, and you know, the more astute of your listeners would know that whenever there is a love story, there's a confidential version of the story. And then there is a story that you tell your friends and family.
We want friends and family.
And then there's a story that you tell the world.
Basically, I thought about him strongly without knowing it's him.
Hmm, you manifested him.
I mean - I'm, Almost. At least his place of work and stuff. So, you know, for work, I've been traveling to Delhi a lot, and I remember this conversation with my dad where I sat down and I said, listen, now it's getting too much. I've almost checked out and checked into every three star or like home stay things that Delhi has, and I'm tired, right? Maybe I should have a place in Delhi. Then I had this loud monolog saying, okay, but who will, like, qho will take care of the place? Like, I can't just have a place in Delhi and that can't be closed. Then I said, Dad, I have a solution. I need to find a guy. And he said, Okay, so what's your solution to a house in Delhi. And I said, oh, a man from Mumbai who lives in Delhi, and not knowing that Apoorv would get, like, a job in Delhi. But we were friends for eight years, and the friends who were the cover story for home, like, if you had to go out and not share it, it was like, I'm with Nidhi. So, friends who created each other's Tinder profiles, friends who introduced each other to single people, and then one day we're like, Oh, you're the one.
Dosti pyaar mei badal gayi.
Pyaar dosti -
Iss dosti ko rishtedaari mei badal diya.
Lekin, move kisne? I mean, kaise hua? I mean, tell little detail.
I'll tell you the fun thing of how we met. He tracked me down, Parmesh, I kid you not. You could have labeled as a stalker or something.
No but this is after you've made each other's Tinder profiles?
No no, when the first time - The way we met was because, you know, I topped some media course, etc, and I was blind, and I was the only blind student in that whole board, and dadadadada. And it was covered in a some major news publication, and it was covered with me and my brother, his story and my story. And one day I get this call, and I still remember I was in the auto rickshaw, and he calls me and he introduces me. I'm like, how did you get my numbers? So he'd called my former workplace
Wow
Taken an oath that he's not a stalker, he just needs help. And he called me to get introduced to my brother and never spoke to him for the next three years.
Yeah, I mean, like so clearly I made the first move, but that was fun, because I managed to convince her former colleagues to give out her number to me, a complete stranger whom they had not spoken to before. And after that I think, kind of, you know, we'd been in touch, and we'd become really good friends. We just hit it off very well. That's all there was to it. She used to call me from wherever she was in the world about to take a flight. But yeah, I think kind of, you know, somehow it just came together in some fashion.
And you all continue, I mean, I've seen, I've known you all for years now that. I mean, I think that basic foundation of friendship, of laughter, of humor, of affection, of you know, is what's made the marriage also so spicy and wonderful. I think you all are the first romantic couple on this podcast, maybe because it's only Season One and one of the first few episodes, but still, thank you for coming. And Nidhi, I want to ask you about, you know, we could spend like hours discussing your professional artistic journey, and we alluded to some of it right. Breakfast in Geneva, lunch in Delhi. It was, it's been a hard life, but you know, you've been an activist and a disability advocate much before you founded Rising Flame.
Yes
So if you can just trace for us what - you know, your path before Rising Flame, and then a little bit about what you do with Rising Flame. That might be great for everyone who's listening who doesn't know how world famous you already are.
I think it's really important to have an inspiration, right? And I think the inspiration came to me very early. So all the listeners, I live with blindness, right? And I wasn't always blind. And this is crucial, not because people think, Oh, I became disabled, and it was a hard journey, and so I moved into the space, but the disability made me realise, right, to have conversations, because I was searching for answers, saying, What am I going to do next? What has happened? What is this life with blindness? So it's not just the lived reality, but what the lived reality did. It was this conversation with my spiritual guru, and he said, You're thinking too much about yourself. If you just take the blindness and think about others and look around you. You know feels like a pun saying, look around you, but it's really - he said, Just look around you and you'll know what to do. And I think that was my first step of realising my privilege, of becoming conscious about my privilege. And very often, and it's not just coming out of humility, it's really, really that I grew up, or I slowly was losing sight, but I was becoming more and more conscious about how much privilege I held, even in that position of a woman living with a disability, right? And I think that privilege, that consciousness, that support that I receive. So when we're talking about these terms, which, you know, the United Nations Convention really brought in our lives, the reasonable accommodation, the enabling environment. I didn't know all these terms, but I was experiencing this because I was with a family that was building all of this, right? So when people say, the first thought is that life is over. It was not like that for me, because my brother is disabled, my sister is non-disabled. I'm the youngest of three siblings, the parents that were fabulous support, like everybody was living a life, which demonstrated that there is a successful, happy life with a disability, and what you need to do to co-create that system, that environment, right? And I think that left a big impression. And this is why, after multiple Post Graduations, Mass Comm, etc, working as a journalist, I basically decided that I need to put all these skills together, and I want to see these skills creating an impact. I live with a disability, and in spite of having many specialisations, including education, including going abroad, for Masters to LSE - the thing that constantly you know, well-wishers also said was, if you're disabled and you move into disability rights activism, people will think you had nothing else to do. I was like if I cared about what people thought, it's gonna be a next level, right? But I also thought that I had that environment which allowed me that space, right, which - allowed means, not permission wise, but like just allowed me that privilege of space. And I did that. I moved into and I moved laterally. So I didn't come into the Disability Rights space from disability NGOs, right. I went into the women's movement. I went into the sexual rights movements, health rights movements, human rights movements, and I said, I'll work with all of you, because disability is an issue for all of us. And why is it an issue? Because I don't want to quote big stats, but I want to make it real. Every sixth person in the world lives with a disability. How many people do we know? Do we know every six person do we recognise they live with a disability? Do we ask them? Are they included? And this is why Rising Flame was founded, because I saw over the course of time that people are talking about, let's create some space for disabled people. This is not nice. Give them some reservation, right? First of all, the space does not belong to anyone that you can give it to someone, right? But also, secondly, the most important is that it's high time that we stop talking about, can we at least include them? I'm like, no. They need to lead from the front. We all have potential, and that's what Rising Flame - if you look at the name also, the flame is the changing of the stigma, mindsets - everything that you said in your introduction, but rising is also to say that it's enough. We're going to lead from the front.
I've witnessed the fellowship, because one year I was so happy to be part of the jury. And what an incredible journey it was. And just, you know, getting goosebumps thinking of all the talent that we saw, right, but just tell us about all the different things that you do at Rising Flame.
Right. So Rising Flame works for people with disabilities, for and with right, but also focuses on women and youth. So women and youth very loosely, but gender and age marginalised. The idea of Rising Flame is to amplify voices and realities and lives of people who are not heard even within the disability spaces. So it's not just persons with disabilities, but the intersections within. Right? And the idea that Rising Flame came forward with, or was born with, was that we will do a two fold thing. We will one, work with the community, because we are the community. It's a self led team, right? Majority of us are living with a disability, mental health condition, chronic illness and so on and so forth, where women and gender marginalised persons with disabilities leading the work at rising flame and also forming a part of the team. But the idea was, while we're working directly to build capacities, to educate, to create leaders from the community, we also need to work on the ecosystem. Be it policy makers, be it health professionals, be it media, be it technology and so on and so forth, but to have us the range of stakeholders, and to work with them, through trainings, through curriculums, through advocacy, through research, through publication and so on and so forth, and then mass education. And that really became the heart and the core, whether be it the first ever Leadership Program country-wide that we started nationally for women with disabilities, called I Can Lead, or the youth program that we have, which we're very fortunate to have you as a part of, or even the grassroots women right who are working towards a career, towards social change and need those skills or support to go deeper in their work or take the decision agency back with them. So Swarna Jyoti Leadership Program. So our leadership program became the core bucket, and then we worked with a range of things around media fellowships, around mental health verticals, with counselors, with so on and so forth.
And then you take it to the government, you take it as you know, all around the country and the world, right?
We take it to the governments, I think, really through the work that we did in the COVID, right? We were, literally in India, the first and the only publication that spoke about women with disabilities and the impact of COVID and how they were, you know, we were talking about violence as a shadow pandemic, but nobody spoke about the kind of violence that women with disabilities were facing, right? From physical, sexual to financial abuse to everything else. And we influence policies. So the National Human Rights Commission Advisory - our work with G20 last year, right, within the Civil 20, we basically said that disability needs, you know, it's a cross cutting issue, yes, but there are issues that we need to highlight as a group that has its own identity, that's a large population. We're not just like a, you know, very large minority, if you want to put it in those terms. And we ended up, you know, leading - advocating for and then leading the process across 20+ countries when India had its presidency, or be it the work that we're doing this, this time with the feminist movement, which is at the Asia Pacific level, changing UN policies and influencing governments all over again. So yeah, it's been a very interesting journey in a short time of seven years, but very, very satisfying and very giving. People say we give to the work, but I think the community gives back so much more that it's incredible.
I'm in awe of you, and I can't imagine how, with all of this you find so you find the time to do stand-up comedy also. But you know, basically, Apoorv - you've built the career that so many Indians have dreamt of, right? You've done all this tremendous academic accomplishment. You're a CA, you went to B school at Stanford, so 100 - you know, 1,000% husband material like, what more? Right? And now you're a leader with one of India's most exciting and, you know, biggest technology and mobility companies. But the space that you've carved out here has been - is so utterly unique. So I want you to tell us about all that you do at OMI and why you do what you do.
Thank you, Parmesh, and thank you for all that endorsement for being excellent husband material. But apart from that, so you know, OMI is a think tank. We do policy research, and we primarily focus on sustainable and inclusive mobility as well as livelihoods. I head research at this organisation, and what it basically means that all the research that we do - primary, secondary, collaborative, I have a chance of overseeing that, guiding that. I'm really, really privileged to be working with incredible people, passionate people, who are subject matter experts over here, right? So within these realms, we work on electric mobility, we work on clean transitions, we work on urban mobility, and, you know, making sure our environment is benefiting, our infrastructure is benefiting. We also work on future of work, which is the new platform economy that's coming up. And we also do a lot of work on making the mobility systems and livelihood, etc. more accessible, more inclusive for people with disabilities, for women, for other marginalised communities. So I also live with a disability. I can't see very well. The technical term is low vision, which basically means that you know it's not like you're completely blind, but you don't see well enough, or at least not the kind of, you know, visual loss that can be corrected by maybe spectacles or something like that. So it's, it's somewhere in between.
And it changes when it's darker, and -
So, you know, like different lighting conditions, contrast conditions can result in different levels of, you know, quality of image that I perceive. And I have also grown up with this. I wasn't born with a disability, necessarily, but I acquired it fairly early in my age. So as a kid, I had my friends who used to cycle to school, right? And I wasn't allowed to do that for safety reasons. I very much wanted to do that. I knew how to ride a bike, so I somehow managed to convince my parents. My mother said, okay, the only way I'm going to let this happen is I'm going to cycle with you to the school, and so, it started off being a very, very memorable day for me. When we reached school, however, one of my teachers spotted me. She first reprimanded my mother for being such an irresponsible person, putting my safety at risk and that of others, and then in school also, in the classroom with everyone, reprimanded me and you know, just that realisation that, okay, not only that mobility is difficult, it also is restricted by other externalities necessarily, right? That stayed with me, and it has impacted so many choices - everything from, you know, whether I get to go to a movie or a trip with my friends, where is my place of work or my where do I get my education from? What happened is when I went to Stanford for my education, that time, this all ride sharing, and everything was coming up. So suddenly, like, you know, there was this moment wherein I was able to pull out a phone, select my pickup and drop spot, press a button, and a ride would arrive, right? And you can't imagine how liberating a feeling it was. So therefore, when I came back over here in India, and I first worked with Ola, but then I also realized that something like this needs to also have a top down push. And that's how I came to work with OMI and the kind of policy research that we do over here, it gives information to policy makers to take data driven decisions. So I'll give a small example. In 2023 we released India's largest mobility index, surveying more than 50,000 people across 40 cities of the country. We engage with the administrators and also procured secondary data. We looked up news articles, and 3.1 million data points synthesised in nine parameters. And the beautiful thing about this is that in this survey, there were 40% women, 4% people with disabilities, 2% were non binaries, LGBTQI. So, you know, it was truly representative. And now when we go to policy makers, and we tell them that, look, here's how your 40 cities stack up on various parameters. This is a city which is very accessible, this is a city which is not, right. I think the willingness and ability to drive change is higher. These are all multi-billion dollar or you know, hundreds of crores worth of investments, and you need data along with political will to put money to make this improvement. So that those are some of the things that I get to do over here at OMI.
But, are they not doing this themselves, that you need a think tank or an external institute to be doing these surveys and giving them this data? One would imagine, with these thousands of crores of investment, someone would be doing this research right?
You know, sadly, I think we are not there as a country to be able to call ourselves data rich. For example, we haven't had census, right? So, I mean, like, you know, we don't have that kind of data. Many a times, disability is also considered to be a marginal subject, so not a part of mainstream, right? So you don't have that kind of data point, which is captured. As a country in our SDG reporting, disability, which forms one of the indicators very often - we don't have data around that. But also, there is an important place for think tanks and organizations like us to do that as well, because to be able to look at it from a particular lens. So for example, we could have easily developed this index without going into the stratification by gender, by age, by disability, right? But we did that consciously, and that's what you know, makes it more holistic, more rich. Very often, the schemes that we have, very often the interventions that are made - even during COVID, for example, every other day you had some new intervention, some new restrictions, some new safety advisory, which was coming up, right? But how many of them were really accessible? You had PDF files which people with visual disability, like me and Nidhi can't read, because very often they'll be scanned copies. Right? You had ministers and health experts coming and giving guidance or framing policies as a part of press conference, which is not accessible for people who live with hearing loss, for example. And so, you know, things ought to happen, yeah, but I don't think it's happening, and therefore there's a there's a need for it to happen at a larger scale, led by the government, but there's also enough of room for organisations like ours to be able to make a difference.
But I'm so grateful you're doing this work. At least when you present the data, do you find responsiveness? You said you share it with policy makers. Are you seeing an enthusiastic embrace of what you're saying, and saying this is great, we've not thought of it like this. Let's tweak -
Yeah. So you know, I'll give you a couple of recent examples. We work very closely with Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and - which also puts in metros in the country. They're also one of the more accessible modes of transport. It's a controlled environment. What they make up in terms of physical accessibility, digital accessibility does not necessarily feature on the top of their list as easily. So I had a meeting with a Joint Secretary in the department, and I presented some of our research, some of our findings to them. And he was to his credit, very, very open in acknowledging that this was a miss and it needs to be corrected. Similarly the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation - they are also actively, you know, ensuring that the station environments that are coming up, the trip experience, per se, that is made accessible for people with disabilities. The real moment when this can be achieved actually, is when you take note of all of these things and account for it in your planning and budgeting phase, right. And these are not expensive interventions. You know, World Bank has published multiple studies which tell you that accessibility improvements are barely 1-2% of the project cost. There is certainly a need to do better, and the need to do better yesterday.
Yeah, Apoorv, I think everyone needs to do better, and it's one of the reasons why we actually have this podcast, right? So people can listen to experts like you both, get the data, you know, hear about the stories of success and change, and really understand that co-creating and living in a better world is beneficial for everyone. And I just want to ask you about, you know, your journey, right? a, why leave America and come back? Was it Nidhi, what brought you back?
*clears throat*
I - I woke up and -
*laughs* For everyone who's listening, I just pointed at myself. And Parmesh was saying, why come back? And I was like, me, me, me.
I was manifested over here. I don't know what happened, actually, like, you know, one day I went to bed. The next day I was here, just in Delhi.
Married to Nidhi
No, so - no no no.
That was not the went to bed.
Yeah I'm like wow.
It didn't happen that way.
Ooh, exciting, shaadi ke pehle bhi kuchh hua. I knew it.
Mai isliye bol rahi hoon, that was not the bed he's referring to-
No, so you know, so I was very clear when I went to Stanford. I always thought that there's a lot of opportunity, work, and potential here in India. So I was clear that I'm going to come back over here. Obviously, the fact that family is here was an important factor. But when I was over there, I also worked in US for small parts. I went to Argentina and I worked over there. So I have, you know, like done work elsewhere apart from India as well. The reason to come back was also motivated by just the room to, you know, make a change over here. See, I think I'm incredibly fortunate just to be born in the time that I am, to have the kind of parents, the family, friends, access to technology. I've benefited from, the small bits and big like, you know, changes that have been brought about by people, and so there's also a responsibility to continue the trajectory, right?
Well, sensible, but it can also be lonely, right? Because there aren't, at least in the US what I would imagine there were others like you at the top level in the corporate world, right? But here in India, anything that sets you apart from this standard, you know, white collar leader, which tends to be cis, straight, non disabled, upper caste male, and we could narrow it even further, right? And here you are, you know, a corporate leader working at the top level who's very different, and now you're saying, I belong here.
As a disabled individual, it's certainly a unique experience. And even, you brought up US for that matter - yes, the things are probably a little better over there. They've also had a lot of time to work on themselves and their infrastructure. But even when I was there in the business school, for almost two years that I was there, I was trying to find out, and even before, you know, I actually landed up at Stanford, like, were there any other blind, low vision people who attended a program, did Executive MBA, or, like, full - whatever. And there weren't many. Actually there weren't any, for that matter. And it so happened that I learned about two individuals who had attended business school many, many - like decades before me. I say this as a matter of, you know, such a big loss of opportunity, because it's not like people with disabilities never existed. When I started my career, there were big and small, you know, issues that I had to face. So as an example, in corporate world, a lot of you know, interaction, bonding happens in informal settings. So you're passing a colleague, you you kind of, you know, meeting someone at the water cooler. You happen to share a table with someone in the cafeteria. You take the time to introduce yourself. Then you meet them again. You see them from a distance. You give a head nod, you go and approach someone, and you say, hey, you know, by the way, fantastic work on this one or whatever - I need, I'd like to collaborate. There are these small things, and all of these are visual. Many of these things happen as much on like, you know, on spreadsheets and emails and all of that, as much as it happens outside. So some of those experiences are completely unavailable to me, right. Then again, when I had started my career. The other part, for example, was that for about a month or so, I was not assigned on a project, even though there was extremely dire need of resources and manpower. And so when these things happen on and off, because it's not just like you know your first opportunity, it is your first opportunity of every kind, right, first opportunity to go and do an audit, first time to go out of station, first time to organise, let's say, a demonstration for someone, or to present in front of a leader. Every single time this first comes up, there's a question that the person who's giving you an opportunity may or may not have, and there's a question that you may or may not have. And you don't really have that blueprint, right? You have not seen people with the same set of skills and constraints crack this. So you have to do it for yourself over and over and over again. You're forced to be on your toes to be ready, to be adaptable. So there are, kind of positive outcomes of this story as well. These structural hurdles is not something that needs to be there. So I don't think like there is a, you know, necessarily, a moment which has come about and I told myself, yeah, I've arrived right. Be it for all the you know shifts in my career, be it receiving the National Award from the President of India. At some level in myself right now, I'm still a little insecure. And I think that's not necessarily a bad thing, it some it sometimes kind of holds you back. But that's not necessarily a good bad thing, because the opposite of that, to me, is also landing up in your comfort zone.
And these pipelines are, in a sense, what both of you are trying to build, right? Nidhi, you through Rising Flame's work, and you through all the interventions over at OMI to get, you know, corporate India, state and national governments just to understand the infrastructure that needs to be built to bring more, right? Because otherwise, as you said, how will we create a 10-15, $20 trillion economy without Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas? It can't be only able bodied people, yeah men, it has to be everyone, right? So that's the whole point, right? I say this with my own experience, because there are very few queer people at senior leadership levels as well. So at one level, sure, you know, one does the work and one doesn't want to be complacent, and - but at the other level, it would be just nice to have a bigger cohort of people who get you in ways that maybe other people, even though they're well meaning and allies just don't, right, and other people have that. And all the data says that women at the top, for example, flourish more when there are other women around them who look and sound like them, just so that they can have that, you know that peer group comfort. So I'm actually looking forward to living in India, all of us together, where are so many more people at every level, as you describe, including at leadership level.
I think you're right, because you know, so the data does say that. So there's a World Economic Forum report that tells us that hardly 3% of people in the C suite at the board level acknowledge of having a disability.
Yeah. Everyone listen. Do the homework. Help us co-create this better. I want both of you, Nidhi, if we can start with you, to just tell me about, you know, the world that you want to live in.
I'm actually going to pause and just go back to the previous question to add a little bit. So for me in the leadership journey, so I'm not working with corporates, right? So if you tell me, are you a person in the corporate system, in the industry - I am in the nonprofit space, which is actually working with all the stakeholders to make these changes and influence, right? But the whole idea about - you know Apoorv mentioned, some of the informal spaces where you connect, I think what happens when you live with a disability or any kind of intersectionality, what I want to say is when you're not fitting in that quote unquote normal, right? Because we all have a cultural context, we have a social context, we have an educational context, we have a capitalist context - we have many contexts that we come from, and we hold all of them together. And if you don't fit into those contexts which form a normal for them, it is immediately that you come from a space of judgement. So Apoorv is in general kinder than I am, but I'm also saying this, been a part of the community, but also working for and with the community, that, as an individual in a leadership or an employee position, you're coming in a space of work which starts with judgement - which starts with a question on your abilities, and the question is not even valid because you know, all the things that prove an ability in a job interview or in a promotion you're fitting that. It's just our idea about fixating or focusing, or a very myopic view of what ability can look like, right? I think that is the main issue, and if we really solve that, some of which what you and Apoorv both have been saying, that we'll see many more stories, right? We'll see many more people, we'll see a cohort. What is right now happening is we are an exception, and the point is that we don't want to be an exception. When I say this, people think I'm being humble, but I think this is what we want. That we don't want to be that only disabled person in a team. It's very interesting because where you're accepted is also very interesting, even in a non profit, where you're leading, right? Immediately the external perception, if not the team, is that the people working with you are actually managing everything, and you're the face of it, right? So again, there's a question on your capability, maybe not from the team, right? We've had experiences where, because I have a visible disability and my colleague has an invisible disability, and we're both in leadership positions in different capacities, they would feel that the colleague is non disabled and go to her, which is a problem to both of us, because you're erasing her disability and disrespecting mine. And a simple thing to foster this participation is not just mindsets, not just infrastructure in terms of technology, etc. I think the point right which Apoorv made about coolers - People make smoking rooms. Are they accessible? The companies that are committing to gender inclusion are building creches now, right, for women to come back to - but did we think about the accessibility of creches? And where does a thought miss out? Why do we miss out the thought is because we are coming from the social context of women with disabilities will not have kids. So I think it's very enmeshed with each other - the whole journey, and I think that's really important. Now coming to why, in this context, what success would look like. I think, like when you when you ask about what's that ideal day, right? That we won't be needed because they'll not be achha disabled people are separate, right? There are no questions. We're integrated in a way that we are just part of society. So we are part of opportunities, we are part of mistakes, we are part of successes, and we are part of failures. What happens when you have very few opportunities is that you're not allowed to fail, and it's huge pressure. So for me, that's really an ideal day, but to be very practical, I do want to say that Rising Flame, and the success of Rising Flame is really that we build a larger community, that we connect with more and more people with disabilities, women and youth, with gender marginalised folks with disabilities, and are able to bring out their realities, create those opportunities, work with them and bring their voices to this ecosystem that needs to change. So recently, Rising Flame published a book, and which was a big, big step for us, because HarperCollins published the book with us - HarperCollins India, and these are women with disabilities from South Asia rewriting a popular genre of tales, which is fairy tales, right. Forget about disability. Like, what were these tales telling us, and where were people with disabilities? Because we grew up thinking we're not part of stories at all, right? And so we published this book. And I think that also comes from this very, very deep, very personal - you know, the reason I conceptualised this kind of program and vision of publishing was also because in my personal life, right, very often I got asked saying, when would you think disability would become, quote, unquote normal? And I was like even Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, if Kajol was disabled, and the movie was super hit. The story did not change, right? It was still that, like, full of passion and disbelief and whatever else it was, right, and dancing and song and everything else, but Kajol was disabled, right? I think when we start accepting, embracing disability as that a part of our life, that's when things will change. We didn't think twice before building elevators, right? But we think five times about the cost and everything if we have to build a ramp, because elevator's for all of us, and somehow we believe that ramps are not for all of us.
Yeah. But tell me about some of what you see in popular media. I love the book - and everyone listening, please go get the -
"And They Lived Ever After"
"And They Lived Ever After," it's incredible retellings. Some of them are scary, some of them are romantic, some of them are joyous, you know, covering the whole range of emotions. And it was a roller coaster ride for me and, yeah, thank you so much for making the book happen. But Nidhi, along with this, what do you think about - and Apoorv you as well, what do you think about some of the like movies like Srikanth, for example? Or, you know the fact that, at least in small ways, on platforms like Netflix and others, there is more representation in almost every series and so on. I mean, do you think all of this is positive?
So I think when representation is right, it's positive, Parmesh. There is positive movement. See, whenever I say strong things or make people uncomfortable through stand up, I'm not trying to say that there's been no progress, right? I think there's a lot of progress, but what's the effort and what's the proportionate outcome, and where do we want to be? is always my question. I'm like, great, right, you got it in some films, great that we have audio description and caption in some this, right? So it's access and it's representation both, right? I'm like, what do you want me to do? Like, watch only those four series where there's audio description? My point also comes from pushing much more. But in terms of representation, I would also say controlling the damage. We create so much harm. There's a recent influencer who made fun of stammer. We just use disability for humour, for political fights. Often, opponents will talk about, you know, lame, incapable, spineless, blind, deaf - like these words are used to put down your opponents, right? So one of the films - this was when I was a teenager, right? You know, I'd watched that film, and it impacted me also, because I was processing becoming disabled, right? Of course, then I moved, and dadadadada - I had this whole journey, and I had the opportunity to empower myself. I went for a workshop in UP, right? And we were talking to these young girls between 18 and 22 and it was amazing because I was asking them as an icebreaker, saying, tell me a dream. So first toh they didn't speak only for an hour, hour and a half, two hours. And then finally, I was like, what's up with you guys? And they're like, nobody's asked us if we had a dream. We didn't know we could dream. Then I kept nudging them right, and I said, ichha bata do. Tell us a wish, if not a dream, right? Like wish could be, I want to wear pants instead of dress, salwar kameez, right? Could be I want to eat pani puri. And this one woman, one young girl, would just not speak. And then I was - because all her friends were giggly and saying, humko boyfriend chahiye. So I was like tumko nahi chahiye? Shaadi wadi nahi karogi, right? You don't want a boyfriend? You don't want to get married? And she's like, she was so angry, and she said, No. So I thought, let's ask, because it may be that she's, you know, she's not attracted to men. Like, what happened, right? As a trainer, you're really open. And she said, humko nahi karna hai shaadi. And I was like, okay, but why are you so angry? And then after lot of nudging, she said, I don't want to look like a fool on my marriage day. I said, why would you look like a fool? And she's like, because everybody will show pity and sympathy because I am on a wheelchair. I cannot walk. My lower part of my body does not work, and I will, you know, the man will have to pick me up, even for the pheras, and everybody will know I'm a burden on him. And I asked her, I said, did you watch Mann? And she was zapped, Parmesh. She was like, Aapko kaise pata chala? And that scene where the story is that she sacrifices a relationship so as to not be a burden on the man, and then in her own mandap, it could not be accessible, and it was a shock that you had to get up for pheras - which, which Hindu wedding there's a shock that you have to get up for pheras, right? But the portrayal leaves so much damage on people with disabilities, and I think it's really important for us - it's almost a responsibility. You can't take entertainment as just fun. I think I'm hoping that we move not two steps ahead, but 15 steps ahead very soon.
Yeah, thank you for that.
Hard to follow that, right? I think everything that Nidhi said holds true, is very, very important. And at the same time, I think we need representation of people with disabilities in media. We also need these stories to be told by people with disabilities, right? The celebration would have been of maybe a different aspect, or maybe just, it's just like, you know, yeah, it's like any other marriage, some joyous occasion for people. So, you know, like acknowledging that there is a lot of room to grow in this area. What I also want to underscore is that see, as people with disabilities, we are somewhat fragmented a community, right. We don't necessarily have a common history to refer to. We don't have fables or the fairy tales the kind that Nidhi has written. So I think popular culture has a very important role in giving that support, right? Also to give imagination and to paint stories, to let you believe and aspire for more. There's saying which says something like you can't be what you can't see, right? So there is a lot of room for that. And all the progress that has happened is very, very welcome. But as we go about doing that, I think there is some need to represent people as people, not as extraordinary superhero. So, for example, the Srikant movie that you brought up -
Somehow I knew you were coming up to that.
So, absolutely astounding story, right? And there's also limitation of the period - the time that the movie can be made for. So you do end up like, you know, squeezing a lot of stories. But that story was like, it not only left a non-disabled individual in awe, but also like, you know, that's the standard that anyone needs to go to, to just you know, have a regular opportunity, right? So we need disability to be represented more in diverse form, in diverse situation, not as just comic relief or like a villainous character, etc. Sure, so Rajnikanth is also Rajnikanth. I mean, he's a non-disabled person, and he does extraordinary things. So we also need people with disabilities doing that kind of stuff. But we also need regular people, and we need these stories to be told with honesty. By that, what I mean is, like, you know, all the flaws and the features need to come out. It's not just like, you know, one trait magnified to the times 10 and 100.
Yeah, and that will help. I guess, when there are more people from the community, making the work as well right.
Involved in the process, basically, just like your scriptwriter. It goes back to, who do you see as disabled.
Do you have any family members in the industry -
We just signed a film.
We are open for roles.
No, but - just to, just last thing around popular media, right, besides people with disabilities, and really, for any community that's important, right? Who is in the creation process, right? When you wanted to showcase just the ethics of photos, right? When you want to showcase a wheelchair user, why would you stand up and not put the camera at their level, right? So, from camera angles to the stories, to the way you narrate, to the characters you pick out, to the way you even put trailers. And this is not for Srikanth, this is for just general I'm saying, right? That how do you put the trailer? It's like (gasp) - is that the moment that you're creating with that story? Or it's like, "oh my god", is that - what are you trying to create, right? And why is all this mattering, right? People sometimes get up and say, y'all are never happy. If you don't make movies, you're not happy. If you make movies, they're like terrible movies. I'm like because there are not enough movies. There are not enough general stories. I'm not saying all movies are - non-disabled people's movies, representations are good or what? No.
But there are so many that -
But there are so many over there, right? So it doesn't matter if you create five and four and a half out of them are re-stigmatising, problematic. How is it going to work, right? It's more damaging then. But I think we can make small steps. Ad agencies can make small steps, right? In that washing machine ad - now I'm not even going into gender dynamics - there's always a woman, but even if it is a woman, you think I don't use a washing machine, or a wheelchair user does not use a - you think a deaf woman - just what do you think, who runs our houses? I think we can make small steps. We can start from our memes. We can start from our postings. We can start from our photographs. We can go to plays, theater, scripts. There are so many ways to start. All we need is intent. All we need is action, commit. I'm not even saying commitment.
yeah, and everyone who's listening, I mean, there's the road map, you know, just play this over again and and do it.
And I take advisory and consulting.
Yes, perfect. We went into pop culture, but Apoorv, what does success at Omi look like? At the Institute as well as in the world you want to create.
The lofty you know, visions of organizations becoming irrelevant because there is no need for interventions - I think that can get you to move right. I mean, like that can stir you and bring to action. But for me, I think I would measure successes in like you know shorter milestones. In order for us to reach that eventuality, probably inevitability, we need to start off with data, right. We need to know how many people with disabilities of what kind are there? I'm not talking about, you know, going and thinking of this as a medical condition. But when you know that there are so many people with disabilities - so the census from 2011 says there's about 2%. Conservative estimates says that there are 10%. Global estimates say that anywhere between 15-16-17, to 20%. It depends on what source you look at - all of that. But so we are not able to agree on this basic number, right? Today, hardly 4% of companies are building products for people with disabilities, right? And so there is not a lot of choice. Data is going to be helpful in laying the foundation for that, right? So that's number one. Number two is representation at all levels. And there's a lot that needs to be done to come to this point, but representation at all levels, be it entry level, middle management, senior management, board level, suite level, in politics, in government, in all kinds of leadership. And yes, it's not going to happen overnight, but every single breakthrough matters, and whatever that small breakthrough that can be. So we need a lot of that to happen. The third thing is capital allocation, right? We've seen COVID, for example, we didn't have perfect data, so while I've emphasised data as foundational, you don't need to wait for perfect data to take action and to allocate money, right? Allocate money, take that leap of faith, listen to your constituents and put in that infrastructure. Because you know what, even if you think there are not enough people with disabilities today - but we are priding ourselves up for being the youngest country, right? Like this huge cohort of young, working age people - they are not going to go grow old? And they are not going to have their life constrained by reasons of reduced mobility or vision or hearing or whatever? So you're building for yourself and the infrastructure that we put in, it's not a resource that's going to give you back in a quarter or over a quarter or over a year. These stay for decades, right? So you're going to travel the same road from your home to your mandir or to railway station, even when you're 60-70-80, right. You're doing that for yourself as much as you're doing them for the invisible people who, on paper, exist, but you can't see on the road, right? So allocate capital as a society. Over here, we also need to be demanding as individuals and also as corporations. See because, you know, a lot of corporates have done excellent job around creating inclusive infrastructures within their campuses, but that person has to come to work, right. We also work on platform economy. For a food delivery boy who's on a wheelchair, their workplace is the urban environment. So we need to make those environments also accessible, safe, inclusive, and all of that will require capital and interventions. So, you know, I think we'll take these first three steps as a start. These are small steps in reaching that utopian eventuality, but I think we'll focus on that for now.
Yeah, I like how both of you are talking in different ways about the infrastructure and, you know, the physical, the capital and others - but also the other side, which is the storytelling, the visibility, the representation. Only when we have both of these can we actually have that. I want to talk to you about, you know, disability in the context of DEI, right, there's been almost this eruption of of DEI taking place, you know, as a field, as a function, across the world. So there's all these DEI efforts that are taking place in companies as well, as I would say, in various in state and national governments as well. There's an impetus towards inclusion. The tension is when all of this is happening against - in India, at least, there's this huge pressure to achieve very rapid economic growth. So you know, what is this tension between this impetus towards, say, DEI, towards inclusion of all kinds, versus this rapid pressure on companies, cities, the economy to grow very, very fast to achieve some of these targets. And the second tension, or the second lack in a sense, is that so many conversations about accessibility are about white collar work forces, and not enough are say in, say beyond that. And it could be rural versus urban, it could be formal versus, you know, creative or gig. So of course, both of these are huge topics, so I'm leaving it open to both of you. Which of these tensions do you all want to talk about?
In terms of the pressure to move fast and break things, you know, growth is not comfortable. We should also expand that time frame that we're trying to look for in terms of success. Right? Your month on month, quarter and quarter, year on year goals are important, but so is your long term goal of being able to take everyone together, because if you don't do that, it's going to come back and come back as a cost to you. You'll have to put in that, for example, if you don't invest in people being able to earn a living, create a nest egg for themselves today, you are going to have a large population of people whom you will have to care for. The these are not necessarily elements that you should think of trade off, but I think elements that should be thought of as, how do we achieve both of these objectives? And people have called it double bottom line, or whatever fancy like, you know, terms these MBAs come up with, you know.
I'll quickly just add, right? Apoorv has said a lot of things. I'm just gonna say that I don't see it as a trade off. I see it as an opportunity. I see it as a thing that should go together. Because I mean, again, I'm not the data person, but I will quote some numbers. When we say we want to grow fast, right? Do we want to have a loss on that growth? The cost of exclusion, according to studies, is as high as 7-10% of a GDP of a country, right. So if we are not thinking about inclusion, we are not growing fast. So even if that's your only objective, DEI will have to go together with it at the same pace. And I think this gives us an opportunity to accelerate the pace of DEI, to really - when we keep saying it needed to be done yesterday, I think to bring that urgency in our work and action. And that's why I think I see the space of DEI really growing as an opportunity for all of us.
And as Apoorv said, that's when the demographic dividend will really start kicking in and not become a burden later, cause we'll have built all of this. What I asked about widening DEI efforts beyond the formal because so many conversations only tend to happen in the formal or in the white collar, not in the gig, not in the rural -
As per the census, for example, if you were to think about disability as one paradigm, 70% of people stay in rural India, right? But we also know that there is rapid urbanisation happening. So our urban environments are going to house a disproportional number of people, right? And that also increases the urgency today. I touched upon the the fact that your city is your workspace. So forget disability, right? What is their dream job? Sarkari naukri, right, but there are so few government jobs. Forget government jobs - like formal sector is barely 10- 12%, right. 88% is informal work. If you focus your efforts for creating inclusive spaces only in formal space, how many people will you be able to bring in on board? And how will you really solve for the problem?
In the formal spaces also, unless we think about accessibility and really work with policy makers also - it has to be corporates, industry, policy makers coming together, because we're talking about migration for work, which is so common, and if as a disabled person, you can't migrate for work, because the cities - I mean just students with disabilities don't find rented accommodations which are accessible, right, or whatever else they need living with their disabilities, I think if you're not managing that, we're already blocking even opportunities that people could have from semi-urban areas, from towns etc, to come into these urban spaces in your formal work systems, where they may have jobs, but they cannot do this, right? So I think thinking of that entire thing, where Apoorv said, cities are our homes, right? Accessibilities in both in physical and digital spaces, absolutely becomes important, even for the formal spaces of DEI - and in the informal spaces, I think thinking about inclusion has to be a little different. We're talking about a rural economy, we're talking about people with disabilities living in rural India. They've never been assessed. Many of them don't have - either they have disability certificate because they need some social security benefits, etc, but they've not had education opportunities. They've not had access opportunities, but they have tremendous skill. So maybe we're looking at skill, small businesses, entrepreneurial ventures - we're looking at a different access that could bring them into the workforce. So I think broad thinking, but also collaborative work, where stakeholders come together and make that commitment, will be important for us to move ahead, both in the formal and the informal sector. I do want to still say that we we create a hierarchy within disability, right? And this has to be said. In the movement itself, but also just in society, we create a hierarchy. It's like, which is the easier disability to have, and how do we include them? And then we say, at least we started, right, but it is still not going to solve our issue of missed opportunity - missed opportunity for businesses, missed opportunity for the economy, missed opportunity for society. Because if you don't allow this, this whole conversation of disabled people will be burden is because you are not providing that opportunity.
Thank you, Nidhi and for everyone listening - Nidhi and Apoorv have been doing path breaking and incredible work. But as you've just heard, they've also laid out some of the work that you can do and the work that you can come on board and help solve in terms of the infrastructure, in terms of the narrative, in terms of the gap in all of these as well. So we hope that as you listen to this podcast, it also inspires you to act. You can reach out to us at our DEI lab, you can reach out to either of them. You can reach out to the incredible organizations that are all over our country - national, state, NGO, or you can reach out to your own institution as well, whether it's a school, college, workplace, etc, and engage. Come help us solve for and co-create a more inclusive India together, and Apurv and Nidhi as the last question I just want to ask you, if someone who's listening says, I want to start a conversation about disability inclusion. I want to make a difference. I want to help, but I don't know where to start. What would your advice be to this one person?
I think it's about unlearning and relearning, right? Big words, but when you look at anyone, the 10 people you interact with in the day, just remember that they could all be disabled. And I think that's when you'll be like, Oh, they could be my clients. They could be the delivery person, right? They could be the one watching this reel that I posted on Instagram, and I think first would be that shift. The second is really taking small steps in your everyday communication, everyday interaction, wherever you interact, right? So if you just post a photo on social media, if you could add an image description to it; if you just put a sound clip somewhere, if you could describe that and caption it, I mean, just which has an audio component. In our everyday lives, we could bring disability inclusion in this way. And the last thing is thinking about disability as universal access. You know, we began with, Parmesh, your personal experience, where you shared with everyone what happened recently, but thinking about universal access and just making that shift in our head, right? We generally say arre, this is injury, this is non disability. We're not temporarily disabled. We say this is aging, this is not disability. But if we make that shift saying, who created the vibrate mode on the cell phone, and for whom was it created? Was it for you and me? No, it wasn't. It was for deaf individuals. Who uses it today? All of us. And if you just make that shift in our heads, in our actions, in our conversations, it will just be the starting point that you need. Because a thought can change the world, and it can be followed by action.
So I think in addition to what - everything what Nidhi said, if you are not living with a disability, then before coming up with interventions, I think, have a conversation with people with disabilities. And don't have just one. Because even though, for example, I live with low vision, my experience is not necessarily a representative of people with living with low vision, for one, or for that matter, living with blindness, colour blindness, people with, let's say, locomotor disability and so on. That's where the unlearning and relearning will come from, right? Any solution that you develop, flight test it with people with disabilities, ask them if this is working for you, do you need something different, and listen to them and adapt. And of course, kind of, you know, engage with people who have done that before you. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can certainly, like, you know, stand on shoulders of giants and bring in the next breakthrough. But over here, a lot of collaboration, a lot of co-creation will go a long way. If you are a person with disability, then I think, it's a journey that I'm gonna encapsulate in a few words. But take that journey. Own your disability. Even if you don't want to be proud of it or celebrate it, own up your disability. Own up your narrative, and shape your narrative. Tell your story yourself. That's going to be really helpful. And follow whatever path you choose for yourself, be it in corporate, be it in nonprofit, be it in government, be it anywhere else, for that matter. Every single success that you have for yourself is going to be a notch in your own belt, but also it's going to lay the foundation that we need to make that utopian inevitability come true.
Thank you so much. I love that phrase, utopian inevitability. It's so beautiful. And what a beautiful way to end this podcast. Thank you so much, Nidhi and Apoorv for coming, for braving the weather, for coming and sharing your love story, your work, triumphs, and this incredible, incredible energy that you both have to co-create and live in a better India in which all of us can thrive. Sharing it with us, sharing with all our listeners. Everyone, thank you for listening to India included. Please follow our work on godrejdeilab.com, and we are on Insta, we are on LinkedIn, we are on YouTube. We do serious stuff, we do fun stuff, including lots of memes as well. So follow us online. If you are in Mumbai, come hang out with us in viva Vikhroli. It is truly the best part of the city that you can imagine. And just so much gratitude to both of you, Nidhi and Apoorv.
Thank you so much for having us here. There's so much more to say, Parmesh, always when you're asking the questions or having a conversation. I do want to say a last thing to think about. It is all of us. Disability should matter to all of us, because it cuts across. A woman can be disabled, a queer person can be disabled, our parents can be disabled. Everybody we interact can be disabled. It's an experience that cuts across society, that cuts across our entire life. And so it's not about them, it's not about that group. It's about all of us.
Thank you, Parmesh, for having us over here. It was lovely speaking with you and packing all of this stuff. And thank you to Godrej DEI Lab, thank you to the team who's working behind the scenes and making this possible. And thank you, Nidhi, for the pleasure of your company.
Aww, for so many years, many more years to come.
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