Dear Lovely Sarkar,
Thanks for the response. Let us discuss this outside of this forum. I am not sure if the admins will allow this discussion taking over everything else. Please get in touch with me on WhatsApp at: 9738422284. With best regards, Subramani From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of RSKC-Rising Star Khilte Chehre Sent: 22 January 2026 12:50 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AI] My newsletter on Media Advocacy for disability organisations and individuals Dear Ms. Subramani, Your note did something important: it separated inspiration from advocacy, and insisted on tact, nuance, and strategy. That insistence is rare in our ecosystem. It is also overdue. I’m Lovely Sarkar Soti, Senior Programmes Manager at Rising Star Khilte Chehre (RSKC). I work in the space where that flattening becomes dangerous, because it keeps the real problem intact. I want to give you a short walkthrough of our work because it sits exactly where newsrooms can see cause-and-effect. The problem we are solving : Visually impaired people in India are not excluded only by ramps missing. They are excluded by a daily operating system built on assumptions: * You will not be here. So the airport counter, the hotel lobby, the monument gate, the bus staff, the cab driver, the restaurant—none of them are designed with your presence in mind. * If you are here, you must be managed. So “help” becomes control. A hand grabs an elbow. A stranger speaks to your companion. Consent is skipped. Dignity is treated as optional. * Your rights are negotiable in public. You are expected to accept improvisation, gratitude, and patience—because the system is not trained to treat access as routine service. * For visually impaired women, movement is treated as a risk to be contained. “Safety” becomes a socially acceptable argument for restricting mobility. Care turns into confinement. Over time, women disappear from streets, work, and decision-making, not dramatically, but quietly. This is not just a travel issue. It is a public-life issue. Travel is simply where it becomes visible fast. Why travel is our lever Travel is a stress test for the country’s inclusion claims. If a visually impaired traveller can navigate an airport, check into a hotel, move through a city, use transport, access a monument, and participate in public spaces with dignity, it means systems are functioning. If they cannot, the failure is immediate and documentable. And when visually impaired women travel, the system is forced to confront a deeper assumption: who is “allowed” to take public space. The villain we keep meeting The last mile breaks on behaviour. Pity. Awkwardness. Fear. Impatience. The urge to “take over”. This is how rights get converted into charity. This is how policies die in real life. That’s why we built Act With Empathy—to change default behaviour early, inside schools and colleges, before people become the frontline staff, managers, and policymakers who run these systems later. The larger consequence people don’t talk about Exclusion from Daily Public Life shrinks the country. It shrinks participation in education, work, consumption, and civic life. It keeps a large group out of the economy in ways that never show up as one scandal, but show up as a permanent loss of potential. Tourism is demand-driven. When a segment is excluded, demand shrinks. Visually impaired Indians are also working professionals, earners, consumers, and family decision-makers. When they travel, they spend on transport, hospitality, food, and experiences. Inclusive tourism is market expansion and better service design that improves outcomes for everyone. What I would value from you: A journalist’s critique on how to make this a sustained public conversation that refuses to be reduced to “inspiring” exceptions. If you’re open, I’d love to learn how disability organisations can stop losing the story to sentiment. With Love, Lovely. -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . 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