diversity is not a new topic for india our national anthem proudly represents beauty of our diversity as a nation our festivals our food our fashion our language our religions all uniquely display the richness of a heritage that is deeply rooted in diversity and inclusion in tolerance and acceptance yet corporate india struggles to identify itself as a thriving diverse ecosystem requiring special programs and teams to drive a culture of inclusion to inspect and amplify efforts around diversity this paradox fascinated me both as a student of social sciences and as a human resources professional in learning about this space the concepts that stood out for me were around underrepresentation social justice and privilege i realized that workplaces over time inadvertently and perhaps unconsciously have played a key role in perpetuating under representation and amplifying privilege if we go back in time women in india tilled the land hand in hand with men and we have powerful examples of women leaders person with disability leaders and lgbtqia leaders who through time rose to eminence in their chosen fields the years of invasion followed by colonial rule played a role in the protection gene playing a crucial role with reference to women and persons with disabilities the modern workplace pre and post independence changed that narrative to women playing a more critical role in nurturing and caregiving while men became the providers this urban myth perpetuated itself over several decades with social norms reinforcing these models of acceptable professions for genders the infrastructure did not keep pace for our pwd community and it became incredibly hard for those with any disability to find equity while the nation tried to keep pace to educate and create jobs for its ablebodied individuals its not those women did not occasionally break the norm to be highly successful icons in society workplaces and professions and we even gave the world an iconic if not its first woman prime minister however these were exceptions and for the large part we found it difficult to invest systemically in supporting our unequal citizens in their journey to equality corporations and workplaces woke up a decade ago to the key role they could play in changing this narrative and we saw many investments by corporations to provide opportunities to these underserved and under represented groups in education and in workplaces these wellintentioned efforts did have some green shoots but in most instances continued to remain a corporate narrative a good to do intervention largely dependent on the passion of a few senior executives even organizations who claimed success in this space found that their efforts were successful either around a type of employee group or in certain type of job profiles versus an allpervasive inclusive workplace across frontlines to leadership across gender to ethnicity to sexual orientation and to pwd year 2020 was marked with several related global crises including but not limited to the covid19 global pandemic significant racial injustice and social unrest which had a