Calling a spade a spade

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 one is to replace "us" and "them" with "we". Right now the system is designed in a way that creates a divide by making people look different. Inclusion starts in the mind, goes through a thought process and becomes an outlook.

I think as a system we have complicated the whole idea of diversity, equity and inclusion by making so much fuss about it. It has become the new X factor for organisations to present themselves in public, but I can guarantee most of them don't have a clear outcome in sight. Even where there are targets, they are far from what is actually needed. DE&I is more and more becoming an eyewash rather than solving anything on the ground. Very little progress has been made on building skills and employability. So I ask this: do most organisations even have people with disability on their DE&I panel?

We need to introspect, and we need to simplify. A very simple analogy starts at home. Suppose we have a toddler, a teenager, an adult, someone middle-aged and an elderly person in the same house. Do they all eat the same, have the same abilities, the same needs, the same strengths and weaknesses? Do we dwell on what we call them, or do we make it work for everyone? In the same way, we need to change the lens through which we look at differences in ability at work.

Rahul Rawal is the founder of Thrive & Include. This post first appeared on the old Thrive & Include website in February 2025.

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