MY BROTHER'S KEEPER

Launched by a Delhi collective, the Siblings ki #InclusiveDuniya initiative brings attention to those who grow up around care and disability, but are rarely seen in the conversation themselves. A report on the hidden lives of siblings of disabled children.

- S KEERTHIVAS

YOU mean I'm not weird?

For nearly 37 years, Ankur Kayesth had lived with a quiet uncertainty he could never quite name. Growing up with a younger brother with cerebral palsy and a learning disability, he learnt early to adjust, cope silently, and make space for a family life organised around care. It was only much later, during a consultation with his brother's psychiatrist, that he heard something that reframed decades of experience: siblings of children with disabilities often need support too.

"That's when," he recalled, "countless moments from my childhood suddenly made sense."

Stories like Kayesth's were at the heart of 'Siblings ki #InclusiveDuniya', an initiative launched on April 11 by the Sarvodaya Collective to highlight siblings of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The programme brings together educators, disability advocates and mental-health practitioners to expand the "circle of care" around siblings who often take on long-term caregiving roles without formal recognition.

Founded in 2020 during the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Collective emerged from a concern that people with intellectual disabilities, and their families, were being overlooked even as public attention focused on schools, workplaces and the elderly.

Founder Pooja Sharma remembers one moment that crystallised the problem. "My own brother wasn’t prioritised for vaccines in the early rounds," she said. "Even though people with intellectual disabilities are at relatively high risk. That's when I realised how little understanding existed about what this community actually needs."