Calling Spade a Spade !

Published on: 11.02.2025

Yesterday someone asked me "How specially-abled people can be given rights to live equally in the society?"

Might sound controversial at first but let's start by 'calling Spade a Spade', that means stop calling people with disability special, inspiration, Divyang, etc. It puts them in a different section, it creates a divide. The first step is to identify disability as disability and not as a super power or a demeaner. All of us irrespective of disability or not, have our own battles to fight. If we acknowledge the disability as any other problem will put everyone on the same spectrum making 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 call them that.

And, when we bring everyone together then we can look at each individual’s needs, strengths and weaknesses and give them support, resources, and skills to lead an equal life. Remember, step one is to remove ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ with ‘We’. System is designed in a way currently that creates a divide by making people look different. Inclusion originates in the mind, goes through a thought process and creates an outlook.

I think as a system we have complicated the whole 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion' idea by creating so much fuss about it. This has become a new 'X' factor for the organizations to present themselves in public domain but I can guarantee most of them don't really have a clear output in sight. Even if they have some designated targets but those are far away from what is actually required, DE&I is more and more becoming an eye wash rather than solving really anything on the ground. Very little progress has been made to develop skills and employability. I ask this, Do most organizations 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, let's suppose we have a toddler, a teenager, an adult, a mid-aged and an elderly at home. Do they all eat same, have same abilities, have same needs, same strengths and weaknesses? Do we dwell in what we call them or rather try to make it work for everyone. Similarly, we need to change the lenses for how we look at differences in abilities at job.

By:Thrive & Include