Nipun Malhotra – A Voice for Disability Rights

My disability is arthrogryposis, which basically means that the muscles in my arms and legs were not really developed when I was born, and they would stay like that throughout my lifetime.

You know, I’m somebody who wasn’t born as a disability rights activist, and I actually never even thought that I’ll enter the area of disability till… I had some things in my own life that really hit me that made me realize that I need to do something.

Uh I was doing a master’s in economics from the Delhi School of Economics in 2011-12 when I decided to sit for placements.

And I’d always excelled in academics, I was a country topper in class 12th, I’d done my graduation in St. Stephen’s.

But when I sat for placements for employment in the private sector, it was a shocking and eye-opening experience for me.

Uh because there was this one company who actually asked me, “Nipun, can we test whether you can sit on your wheelchair for eight hours a day?”

And you know, I actually had to tell them, “you will not be able to sit on a chair for eight hours, but I can actually sit on my wheelchair for eight hours”.

There’s another that said that, you know, “Nipun, we don’t believe your CV, can you get a letter from your principal attesting it because we think you’re faking all this with the severe disability that you have?”

Uh I actually walked out of that interview.

There was a third that said, “Nipun, we really like you, but we don’t have a disability friendly toilet, and what if you sue us tomorrow? It’s just safer not to hire you.

And I think they were a bit legally stupid to say that.

At that time, I did not have that mojo to file a case against somebody who does that to me, so I did not.

But yeah, that’s the reason why they did not hire me and they said that to me on the face.

Uh I had a bunch of such experiences and all these experiences were extremely sad and humiliating in that sense…What I realized is that when a person with a disability enters a job interview, in my case, on a wheelchair, it’s the wheelchair that really became my primary identity and not me, Nipun Malhotra and what I’ve done in life.

And I think that’s what really inspired me to start Nipman Foundation.

My mom had been an accessibility auditor for at least 10 years before that.

She was on the part of the access audit team for the Delhi metro etc as well.

So she was already doing a lot of accessibility audits at a lot of private sector companies, etc., and my focus at that time was more that, you know, how do you change attitudes in persons with disabilities?

So I told my mom, you know, you’ve been doing this work, let’s formalize it, let’s start the Nipman Foundation.

People often joke, you know, that do you think you’re Superman that you call it Nipman?

But my brother’s name is Manik, so Nipman is named after me and my brother, Nipun and Manik.

So we started the Nipman Foundation in 2012.

She started offering accessibility audit services under it.

And I, and I started doing a lot of workshops, etc.

And for the next two or three years, that is what we were doing.

Till in 2015, in fact, I still remember the date because it was, I think, another humiliating experience in my life.

I think it’s when I get humiliated in life, really, that, you know, I start doing something.

It’s kind of weird.

Maybe I should start getting motivated by positive things as well.

But on 6th March 2015, I was about to join a few friends at a pub for a few drinks in the evening.

And when I was entering the pub, the pub manager actually told me that we will not allow you inside. And I said, why?

He said, because it would ruin the pub’s vibe if I entered.

And I was extremely shocked.

And I did not know what to do.

I tried going in, but he actually held my wheelchair and dragged my wheelchair out.

And for a person with a disability, as you would understand, the wheelchair is the part of a personal space, it’s like part of a body.

So it’s like holding somebody else’s body.

It was extremely humiliating.

And it became more humiliating because I had five or six of my friends inside, you know, and those friends looked at me as Nipun Malhotra, not the wheelchair user.

And I felt very, I don’t even know how to describe it, but I felt like I wanted to go underground in front of them.

You know, I did not even want to face my own friends after what happened in that sense.

Luckily, my friends were very cooperative.

They all walked out of the restaurant too.

And I sent out a tweet about this incident.

And before I knew it, this tweet started trending on Twitter. And a lot of other people started telling me about how they faced similar incidents.

The pub actually then started accusing me that, “Nipun was drunk, that’s why we were not allowing him in, him in”.

And I, I wrote to the Delhi government, the Delhi government actually asked for CCTV footage and SDM level inquiry was asked for.

And it was proved that I was right and the pub was wrong.

And there were some repercussions the pub had to face.

But more than that, I think the public perception also changed and Zomato rating fell from 4.5 or 4.6 or whatever it was to 2 in one day.

But I realize some institutional change needs to be done.

And I actually then worked with Zomato to add wheelchair access filters to restaurants.

And I think this does two things:

A, of course, it helps identify which restaurants are accessible.

But B, when aggregators start taking disability issues seriously, restaurants change their attitudes too.

Zomato started with the wheelchair access filter, but today, and OYO Rooms has a wheelchair access filter.

BookMyShow and Insider.in have wheelchair access filters.

PVR has started its own wheelchair access initiatives.

So I think Zomato was really the start and looking at Zomato and the success that Zomato had with that wheelchair access filter, there are many others who have started replicating that feature.

Thirdly, this had become a media sensation.

And that’s why I thought that, you know, I got a platform through this incident where a lot of people started to know me.

And a lot of people started writing to me on issues related to disability after that, because they knew that I’m somebody who will take on a challenge faced, when I’m faced with it.

And since then, I think my focus really shifted more from, you know, inclusion and changing attitudes in the private sector on employment – although I think that is something which is extremely important, but a lot of people are anyway doing that – to also working on advocacy and realizing that people with disabilities need to be mainstreamed in all areas of society.

And I think that’s been my personal mission since then.

Q: Could you share details about your advocacy efforts in improving transportation?

So I’ve had two historic cases in Delhi, in fact, when it comes to transport.

One was in 2016, when the Delhi government had announced an odd-even scheme.

The odd-even scheme was basically a scheme to control air pollution in Delhi.

Every year air quality really soars up in December, January and policymakers suddenly wake up to it.

And there are some major policy decisions that are made because of that.

One of them was a scheme where it was decided that on alternate days, odd numbered cars will be used and on even days, even numbered cars will be used.

And I’d written to the Delhi transport secretary, and I was invited by the transport secretary for a meeting to a building on the first floor without a lift to discuss this.

I, of course, thought these meetings are going to go nowhere and I decided to take them to court after that.

I lost my patience.

I also did a media campaign where I actually went along with a camera all across the city showing how inaccessible public transport is, because a lot of people were coming to me and saying that, you know, “for others, it’s an alternative use of public transport scheme, for us, it’s going to be a alternative “stay at home” scheme because Delhi public transport is not accessible to persons with disabilities”.

The Delhi High Court exempted us after the odd-even.

And I thought maybe the Delhi government has learnt its lesson when it comes to accessibility of public transportation and persons with disabilities, but surprise, surprise!

A year later, they come out with a tender for 2000 buses that are completely inaccessible to persons with disabilities.

I again write letters to them.

Again, I’m invited to venues which are not accessible or and by others I’m not invited at all.

And again, I go to the Delhi High Court.

And it’s a two-year legal battle, which, where they use some of the top lawyers to, you know, try to intimidate me in that sense.

There, a lot of environmental activists also come on board against me saying that, you know, “it’s bad for the environment that these buses are not being bought, Nipun is delaying the process”, etc., but I don’t think, you know, while the environment is important, I don’t think you can prioritize one thing over the other.

Why not just buy 2000 accessible buses? And that’s the stand I stick to.

And eventually I win this case.

And today Delhi government has accessible buses.

And this case has actually been quoted in other states by other activists as well to ensure that public transportation that is procured by state governments is accessible to persons with disabilities.

Q: Please share your experience advocating for inclusivity in the entertainment sector.

There was this movie called “Aankh Micholi” that Sony Pictures released, and this movie was pretty terrible in the way it showed persons with disabilities because it showed somebody who stammers as ‘atki hui cassette’, somebody who has Alzheimer’s or another memory related disability as “bhullakar baap”, night blindness was totally shown in a way that is not really night blindness.

And the basic one-line synopsis of this movie was that if you really are a person with a disability and you want to get married, the only way you can get married is by hiding your disability.

And I think movies play a very powerful role in a country like India because they can either change attitudes or they can, you know, reinforce preconceived attitudes towards disability.

And I think this is what this particular movie was doing.

I went to the Delhi High Court, the Delhi High Court under Freedom of speech said that you don’t have a right to intervene and I actually lost that case.

A lot of people told me that you should leave it here, including people from the disability sector, because they thought that, you know, if I get a bad judgment in the Supreme Court as well, it will give movie makers an even more liberty to do whatever they want.

But I thought that let’s give it a shot in the Supreme Court, because you don’t know till you don’t, till you don’t try, right?

We went to the Supreme Court.

My lawyer and I discussed a different strategy where instead of arguing in court, we’re actually just going to show the trailer of the movie in court.

Let the movie itself show to the Chief Justice of India what this movie is doing.

And I think it might be the first time in this country that a trailer of a movie is really shown in the Supreme Court.

And it’s funny that because the electoral bonds issue was being discussed for an hour before this movie’s trailer was shown in court and everybody started chuckling, you know, what just happened, you know, from that to this.

But luckily the Supreme Court issued notice on this issue.

And then what I did is, I did, I did a nationwide survey where I prepared a questionnaire, sent it to a lot of people with disabilities across, a wide variety of disabilities across the country, taking the feedback on this movie after this notice was issued by the Supreme Court.

And we got a lot of feedback.

And most of it was, of course, negative about this particular movie.

And then we presented that feedback to the Supreme Court.

And once we had that feedback, this movie maker could not, you know, show that it’s just one person’s agenda or something, it’s the disabled community as a whole that believes in the fact that this movie is, is bad.

And eventually the Supreme Court actually came up with guidelines for portrayal of persons with disabilities in visual media.

Q: How did you launch the ‘Wheels for Life’ initiative and what impact has it made?

So in 2016, I started this initiative called “Wheels for Life”.

And I’ll give you a bit of a historical context to it.

Personally, as a family, we used to distribute 5 to 10 wheelchairs every year to people with disabilities who need them.

And we’d already given our quota of wheelchairs, which we could in that particular year.

And there was this particular person who approached us saying that, you know, somebody in his family needs a wheelchair.

And we actually ended up visiting that child.

And obviously he needed a wheelchair.

And I told my aunt, you know, one of my aunts that, you know, there’s this boy called Rajaram, I still remember his name, who needs this wheelchair and he’ll be able to go to school if he gets a wheelchair.

And my aunt told me, “Oh my God, how much does a wheelchair cost?”

And I said, you know, if you give me 5000 rupees, I can get a wheelchair, have it delivered to his house, etc.

And she immediately took out 5000 rupees from her purse and gave it to me.

I bought a wheelchair, I gave it to the child, and when the child sat on that wheelchair and had that, the most genuine smile that one can see, I ended up taking a picture of the child on a wheelchair and putting it on my family WhatsApp group.

And I think it’s the first, the first and last time that my family WhatsApp group really did something good, you know, otherwise I always mute all these family WhatsApp groups and all, because they’re just for ‘Happy Birthdays’ and forwards, etc., because everybody else in the family WhatsApp group started saying, “Nipun, I want to donate a wheelchair too”.

And I realized that, you know, with this one picture, if I manage getting 10-12 other people to donate wheelchairs, why not institutionalize this?

So I decided to set up this platform called WheelsForLife.in through which we give wheelchairs to persons with disabilities.

The vaccum that this program is really filling is that in India, when you get government services, you need a UDID card, etc., and not even 1.5 crore Indians have a UDID card today.

It’s kind of ridiculous, because there are so many persons with disabilities in India. Secondly, there are a lot of elderly people, people with temporary injuries, etc., as well, who need wheelchairs, but they will not be able to get it out of government schemes, because in government schemes, there are understandable checks and balances as well, in that sense.

So what we do through WheelsForLife is that we’ve partnered with credible NGOs across the country.

And we’ve just given them the authority to choose whoever they feel needs a wheelchair.

I, recently, somebody sent me a photo of somebody going around the Delhi metro using a WheelsForLife wheelchair, selling various, you know, cleaning appliances, etc.

There’s somebody else who actually has a chaat shop somewhere in the city because of a tricycle that was given to them through, through WheelsForLife, etc.

So we keep getting these beautiful stories of people who’ve been impacted through WheelsForLife.

We’ve impacted close to 2,000 lives.

Q: What advocacy initiatives are you currently working on or planning?

So some of our cases that are going on, for example, there’s this case on GST on disability aids.

You’ll be shocked to know that today, a wheelchair, a hearing aid, a Braille keypad, etc., taxed at 5%.

And for me, that’s a tax on somebody walking, seeing or hearing.

There’s a, there’s a case that’s been going on since 2017 in the Supreme Court regarding that, and that is something that we are fighting on.

Unfortunately, it’s not seen its logical conclusion, but we are hoping it sees its conclusion soon.

Apart from that, it’s also intervening whenever any policy comes up.

For example, most recently, the Data Protection and Privacy Act came up, and there was something which was very alarming in it where persons with disabilities with guardians, for such persons with disabilities, complete autonomy has been taken away from them when it comes to data protection and privacy and given to the guardian, which itself is something which contradicts the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016.

Because the 2016 Act clearly says that a person with a disability will continue to have a say in everything as well.

I mean, this is just one example.

I think one of our biggest focus areas really has been looking at whatever policy is coming up and looking at it on how it impacts persons with disabilities.

Because for too long, the disability sector also started looking at things only from a Department of Disability Affairs or an RPWD Act point of view, but disability is intersectional and it’s connected to everything really that happens in society.

So we need to look at disability from every policy, every law, every regulation that really comes into the country in that sense.

Q: What do you think are the key challenges faced by people with disabilities?

In 2016, I got an interesting challenge from the Delhi High Court.

The Delhi High Court actually asked me to train all government officials in Delhi on disability in general.

And I started wondering how can you train people on disability, you know, because disability is such a diverse field.

But what I realized at that time, and I think that is something that has defined whatever I’ve done in my disability advocacy work since then, is that I realized that the challenges people with disabilities face come in three primary buckets.

The first is Attitudes, how you really treat persons with disabilities.

The second is Accessibility.

And with accessibility, I just don’t mean physical infrastructure, but I mean digital infrastructure as well.

And the third is Affordability.

And by Affordability, I really mean the cost of living for a person with a disability.

I called it Three A’s because I’m an MBA, so, you know, I like to bracket it like the Four Ps in that sense, it’s easier to sell.

But if you look at any challenge a person with a disability faces, it will come into one of these three brackets that way.

And I started doing a lot of these workshops with government officials, whether it was the police, whether it was MCD, whether it was PWD.

I’ve even been to Lavasa and trained IS officers, trainees, etc. on, you know, how do you design policy or how do you interact with persons with disabilities in your daily interaction with them. One of the funniest and saddest experiences I had when, when was, when there was this, one 50-year-old police officer in one of my workshops who stood up and said that “I’ve never interacted with a person with a disability, I’ve never seen a person with a disability”.

And actually I had to tell him, “it’s impossible that you’ve never interacted with a person with a disability, you’ve just not noticed a person with a disability”.

And I think once people start thinking more about disability, that change automatically happens that way.

And I always like to end my workshops by saying, you know, that if you’re looking at disability and you’re focusing on disability, you’re not focusing on it for me, but you’re focusing on it for yourself because everybody is temporarily abled-bodied.

Everybody is an injury away from being as disabled, for a few months if not for life, as I am.

Secondly, India has one of the largest elderly populations.

7-8% of India’s population is elderly.

And they require Universal design and Accessibility as well.

So I really think it’s foolish, if not anything else, if we don’t include accessibility and universal design in all our planning.

And that can only happen when we change attitudes and we also give budgets to persons with disabilities where the affordability comes in.

So yeah, the three A’s.