Dr Arvinder Singh
Physician, legal advocate, IIM gold medallist and CEO of Arth Group, Dr Arvinder Singh is using lived experience, law, research and institutional accountability to turn disability rights from policy promises into measurable change.
For most people, a Right to Information application is a tool to seek an answer. For Dr Arvinder Singh, it has become something larger: a way to document invisible barriers, test institutional compliance and push disability rights from paper into practice.
Through Panacea Disability Rights Activists, the Udaipur-based physician, entrepreneur and disability rights activist has filed more than 650 RTI applications across multiple institutions and sectors. The questions have focused on issues that directly affect the everyday lives of persons with disabilities-accessibility in banks, railway stations, public transport, police stations, educational institutions, government offices, healthcare facilities and other public spaces.
The objective, he says, is not to create paperwork. It is to create evidence.
That distinction defines much of Singh's work as an accessibility advocate and disability rights activist in Rajasthan, with an expanding national focus.
A ramp at the entrance of a building may suggest accessibility, but does it actually make the entire service usable?
Can a wheelchair user enter independently?
Is there accessible parking? Is there a usable toilet?
Can a visually impaired person navigate the building?
Is information available in an accessible format?
Can a person with disability approach a police station, register a complaint and communicate without unnecessary barriers?
These are the kinds of questions his RTI-based advocacy has attempted to bring into the public record.
In banking, official replies obtained through RTI revealed that the presence of ramps did not always translate into complete accessibility. Some institutions acknowledged gaps relating to parking, tactile pathways, toilets, signage and other facilities. In at least one case, the process triggered architect visits and corrective work at branches where improvements were considered feasible.
The same approach has been extended to public transport and railways. Singh's work has examined whether accessibility should be measured merely by individual facilities or by the complete journey of a passenger with disability-from entry and ticketing to movement between platforms, toilets, boarding assistance and grievance redressal.
His research on banking and railway accessibility has also moved beyond advocacy into academic publication. Two recent papers published in the International Journal of Law Management & Humanities examine what official RTI disclosures reveal about accessibility governance in these sectors. The central argument is simple but important: accessibility should be measured by whether a person can actually use a service with dignity and independence, not by whether an institution can point to a single compliant feature.
Police accessibility has become another major area of intervention. Representations made through Panacea reached senior authorities in Rajasthan's Home Department and police establishment, bringing attention to the need for disability-friendly police stations, better sensitisation of personnel and stronger implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act 2016).
For Singh, this is particularly significant because accessibility to a police station is not merely an infrastructure issue-it is an access-to-justice issue.
His approach can be described in a simple sequence: identify the barrier, document it, generate evidence, approach the institution, escalate where necessary and continue follow-up until there is a measurable response.
It is an approach shaped by lived experience.
Singh has lived with locomotor disability caused by childhood polio and has spent much of his life navigating environments that were not designed for persons with limited mobility. Instead of allowing that experience to remain personal, he has increasingly converted it into a framework for public advocacy.
His own professional journey is unusual. He is a postgraduate medical doctor and clinical pathologist, heads the Arth Group of companies and serves as CEO and CMD of Arth Diagnostics. He is also an IIM gold medallist, holds a law degree and has studied medical law, mediation, artificial intelligence and communication. He has earned three world records and received multiple national, state and international recognitions. In 2026, the Rajasthan Government honoured him with a state-level Prashasti-Patra for his contribution to social service.
Yet these achievements are not the centre of his current public work. They provide credibility to a larger mission: using education, law, management, research and lived experience to improve systems for persons with disabilities.
Through Panacea Disability Rights Activists, Singh and his team have also worked on disability awareness, accessibility in educational institutions, legal literacy, public campaigns and economic empowerment. Their engagement has extended to schools, community organisations, media platforms and public authorities.
The common thread is a shift from sympathy to rights.
Singh believes that one of the biggest challenges in disability policy is not always the absence of law, but the gap between law and implementation. India already has the RPwD Act 2016, accessibility standards and institutional obligations. The question is whether those protections are visible in everyday life.
This is where he sees RTI as a powerful democratic instrument.
"An RTI is not merely a request for information," Singh says. "When used carefully, it can show what an institution has done, what it has not done, and where accountability must begin."
That philosophy may explain why the number 650 is important-but not for the reason one might assume.
The significance is not that hundreds of applications were filed. The significance is that each application can potentially convert an undocumented barrier into an official record, an official record into accountability, and accountability into reform.
For Singh, the journey now is from overcoming barriers himself to systematically helping remove them for others.
And that may be the more meaningful measure of disability leadership-not how many obstacles one person has personally crossed, but how many barriers become easier for others because someone chose to challenge the system.
