These last six months Rahul, Reuben and I have met a lot of remarkable people associated with disability in some way or the other. In this piece I’m going to talk about two such people – Javed Abidi and Shanti Raghavan.
Javed Abidi
Javed Abidi is to the disabled community in India what Gandhi was to the freedom movement, Martin Luther King to the black movement and Harvey Milk to the gay rights movement in the United States. Nothing less. He is India’s best known disability rights activist and deservedly so. I met him a couple of months back at his office in Delhi. I was the eager beaver inquirer (black book and pen in hand) and he the wealth of perspective and experience. It was a tremendous experience that we wish to enjoy on a more regular basis. The phenomenal thing about Javed is that he is willing to go that little bit further to get his point home. He has argued in the Supreme Court, squatted on sidewalks and pavements, protested outside homes of legistators and politicians. Yes, he is capable of throwing a tomato or two if that is the need of hour. 
Just kidding. He is sharp, incisive, blunt and cares deeply. RC can’t wait to meet him.
Shanti Raghavan
Imagine being so much in awe of someone that despite that person being just a few years elder you call her ‘ma’am’. Well – that is the situation with RCJ. He insists on calling Shanti ‘Shanti ma’am’. He’s going to kill me for this.
What makes Shanti Raghavan so special is not that she is the founder of Enable India, one of India’s best training and placement ngos for the disabled, or that she is an Ashoka Fellow, or that she is all this at a very young age – but, that she energises everything and everyone around her. A conversation with her is like a conversation with a very intelligent person after said person has consumed 10 black coffees and other stimulants. Only she achieves this energy without any of this. If Shanti Raghavan was in the corporate world she would have been a CEO, if she was in politics she would have won the election, if she was an athlete she’d have won a medal – you get it right? That she deeply cares (and is deeply interested) about the differently-abled is our good fortune.
Pssst! Inclusive Planet is collaborating with Shanti and Dipesh (EI co-founder, successful tech entrepreneur and Shanti’s hubby) on the community portal
