Javed Abidi

She was just coming out of the tragedy and...

Yeah.

She and the family friends were planning to set up what's called the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

And they had identified five areas of work, disability being one of them.

And it was a completely chance meeting.

And I made an impression on her.

And then she called me for another meeting.

And at the end of it, she said, would I be interested in setting up the disability unit of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and heading it?

And I couldn't believe that such a huge opportunity was coming my way.

One of the first things that we did was to set up what is called the Disabled Rights Group.

It was India's first cross-disability rights group to say that what we need is a comprehensive law to protect our rights.

Luckily, the government of the day listened to what we had to say.

The law was drafted.

And in a very short period of time, from 1993 to 1995, the law took shape, finally going to the parliament.

This is 1995, which was the election year, and there were a lot of rumors that after the winter session, the government would order for the elections, and so therefore the nation would go into election mode.

In other words, this was the last opportunity for us.

The winter session started, excitement built up, and then there was a controversy, some kind of a huge conflict between the government of the day and the opposition, and obviously it was all political and

The opposition made a big issue out of it.

They marched out of the parliament.

All legislative business came to a stop.