Recently, I had the opportunity to attend Uddeshya 2026, WRI India’s annual gender and mobility conference. This year’s theme focused on the mobility needs of caregivers and persons with disabilities. In addition to the panel discussions, the conference featured an exhibition titled Moving in Her Shoes - Everyday Mobility: Gender, Care and Disability. The exhibition narrated the story of Laxmi, an accountant, mother, daughter-in-law, caregiver, city dweller, public transport user.

Through her lived experience, the exhibition explored women’s mobility patterns and examined how public transport is designed and planned. Using thoughtfully designed graphics, the exhibition illustrated how women’s mobility is often more fragmented, consisting of multiple shorter trips linked to everyday responsibility of managing care and household tasks, known as mobility of care. This kind of travel, the exhibition pointed out, is often overlooked in public transport planning, which tends to prioritise peak-hour and linear commute patterns.

As I walked through the exhibition, one of the things that stood out for me and also echoed in some other conversations during the conference, was the absence of Laxmi’s husband/partner. The onus is on Laxmi to take her children to school and to pick them up, bring groceries, and to take her elderly, wheelchair-bound mother-in-law for a walk in the evening. The absence of the husband throughout the narrative quietly highlights the extra burden many women carry: taking on the bulk of care-related responsibilities while navigating a public transport system that is often not designed around their everyday mobility needs.

The exhibition goes on to point out ways in which the burden of mobility can be eased through better pedestrian infrastructure, better-lit neighbourhoods, and an increased frequency of buses/metros in non-peak hours.

The exhibition also drew attention to the economic value of women’s care labour, noting that increasing women’s workforce participation could add about $770 billion to India’s GDP. It further highlighted that the exclusion of persons with disabilities could cost the economy $210 billion. These are significant figures, especially for a fast-growing economy like India, and they underline why mobility and accessibility deserve urgent attention.

At the same time, linking accessible public transport primarily to economic productivity risks overlooking a more fundamental point: public transport must also be understood as an essential right, tied to the broader ideas of the right to the city and the right to mobility. Women and persons with disabilities are often treated as marginalised groups, while the needs of able-bodied men have historically shaped transport systems. This makes it important to view access to public transport and public spaces for women and persons with disabilities as an intrinsic good, regardless of their actual or potential contribution to the economy.

As Phadke, Khan and Ranade argue in Why Loiter? (Phadke et al., 2012), an important part of accessing the city is also the ability to loiter, to experience urban spaces for leisure and not only out of necessity. Accessible public transport plays a vital role in making cities more inclusive across gender, disability, caste, and class, by enabling people across these social locations to occupy and move through city spaces with greater safety and freedom.

Finally, linking the exhibition to conference discussions highlights scalability as a key challenge. Scalability works best when paired with hyperlocal data (Raghu 2026; Kushalappa 2026; B 2026), since cities of varying sizes and locations face unique challenges. Identifying effective designs for people with disabilities requires this data and adaptable solutions, especially because their needs differ widely and no single approach fits for all. This principle applies directly to last mile connectivity as well, a key factor for both accessibility and scalability. Planners and policymakers must understand local realities to build tailored systems that serve people with disabilities.

References

B, Gangadharan. 2026. ‘From Garbage Burning to Traffic: Why Bengaluru Needs Hyperlocal Air Monitoring’. Citizen Matters, February 25. https://citizenmatters.in/from-garbage-burning-to-traffic-why-bengaluru-needs-hyperlocal-air-monitoring/.

Kushalappa, Mandanna. 2026. ‘Stormwater, Floods and the City: Inside a Citizen Audit of Bengaluru’s K200 Drain’. Citizen Matters, February 19. https://citizenmatters.in/stormwater-floods-and-the-city-inside-a-citizen-audit-of-bengalurus-k200-drain/.

Phadke, Shilpa, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade. 2012. Why Loiter?:

Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets. 1st edn. Penguin Random House India.

Raghu, Archita. 2026. ‘Buyers and Sellers in Koyambedu Market Face Health Risks from Winter Air Pollution’. Citizen Matters, January 8. https://citizenmatters.in/winter-woes-air-pollution-puts-koyambedu-market-workers-health-at-risk/.

World Resources Institute, org. 2026. ‘Uddeshya’. Delhi, March 25.