How ironic is it that we are all the outcome of our challenges, difficult experiences and hardships, yet what we show the outside world is that we are perfect beings with perfect lives. Look at anyone's LinkedIn or Instagram or any other social profile and all you see is how awesome everyone and their life is. My worry isn't really the social profiles, because they hardly matter. My worry is whether we acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we are the sum total of all the goods and the bads. First, everyone writes on LinkedIn that they're a good project manager or a good people manager. Let me tell you, both are acquired skills. Nobody is born with them. You experiment, you fail and you learn, and that happened with me too. Before becoming a people manager, I always thought I was a people's person and it would be a cakewalk. I was absolutely wrong. I failed miserably for a couple of years, and I only started picking up momentum as a manager when I realised one template d...

Yesterday someone asked me, "How can specially-abled people be given the right to live equally in society?" It might sound controversial at first, but let's start by calling a spade a spade. That means we stop calling people with disability special, inspirational, Divyang and so on. Those labels put them in a separate section, and they create a divide. The first step is to see disability as disability, not as a superpower and not as something to pity. All of us, with or without a disability, have our own battles to fight. If we treat disability like any other challenge, it puts everyone on the same spectrum and makes them equal like anyone else. Do we say "people with anxiety" or "people with broken hearts" or "people with financial troubles"? No, we don't. When we bring everyone together, we can look at each person's needs, strengths and weaknesses, and give them the support, resources and skills to lead an equal life. Remember, step...

Throughout my life, I have viewed my disability as a source of strength, something that helps me navigate any obstacle. But recent research on disclosing disabilities at work opened my eyes to the fact that many people feel uncomfortable revealing their disability. As someone with a visible disability, I have never had to face this dilemma myself. To go deeper, we first have to acknowledge invisible disabilities. These include mental health conditions, ADHD, diabetes and other conditions that others can't see but that still affect a person's health. While there are laws in place to prevent disability-based discrimination, not all discrimination is obvious. The culture and values of an organisation play a big role in creating an inclusive environment. Employees with disabilities may worry about how colleagues and managers will see them if they disclose, and how that could affect their relationships and opportunities at work. There is also an inner voice that tells us we are supe...

Financial independence is a fundamental right, but is it for millions of people with disabilities in India? Sadly, it remains an uphill battle. While discussions around financial literacy, wealth creation and savings are becoming more mainstream, there is one critical aspect that is often overlooked: the additional cost of disability. The hidden costs of disability Let me try to be vulnerable here and decipher the cost of disability through my own example: Per month running cost of a powered wheelchair, assuming it lasts 5 years: Rs. 2,000 Per month helper or caregiver cost: Rs. 19,000 Extra health insurance premium per month because of disability: Rs. 2,000 Extra term life insurance premium per month because of disability: Rs. 5,000 Other expenses related to disability, including medicals: Rs. 5,000 Total expenditure because of disability, for me, per month: Rs. 32,000 (Please note the health and term life insurance premiums I mentioned are only the extra amount I pay owing to m...