Bhule Toh Nahi and What’s Your Plan?

A series under The Sangyan — द संज्ञान’s Build Forward Better campaign advancing disability-inclusive climate action and disaster risk reduction

3 min readOct 13, 2026

International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction 2026 | If resilience starts at home, accessibility must start there too.

Resilience is often measured by what a community can withstand. But perhaps we must also ask: who can remain safe, access support, recover with dignity, and participate in shaping what comes next?

**Alt Text —** Square watercolour poster illustrating disaster resilience through a transition from storm clouds to a sunrise over a community. Headline reads “Build Forward Better: Together, for a Safe, Inclusive and Climate-Resilient Tomorrow.” Three signboards introduce “Bhule Toh Nahi? — Have we forgotten?”, “What’s Your Plan? — Are we planning for everyone?” and “Build Forward Better — Let’s create change together.” A house-shaped outline frames the message “Remember • Plan • Act” and “Because a resilient community includes everyone.” A checklist highlights accessible infrastructure, inclusive early warnings, disaster-ready communities, climate-resilient and sustainable solutions, and leaving no one behind. A diverse group, including a wheelchair user, stands together before the community. The footer credits The Sangyan’s disability-inclusive climate action and disaster risk reduction campaign and carries #NothingWithoutUs, #BuildForwardBetter and #LeaveNoOneBehind. Four logos (The Sangyan, Project Saralikarana, SDG Infinity Loop & the Build Forward Better campaign) appear across the top.

A house may withstand a storm and still fail the person who cannot evacuate it. A warning may be issued and still fail the person who cannot access its format. A recovery programme may restore infrastructure while leaving the barriers that existed before the disaster untouched. This is why resilience cannot be reduced to stronger buildings, better equipment or more comprehensive plans. These matter, but so do the social arrangements, public institutions and collective choices that determine whose safety is anticipated, whose knowledge is valued and whose needs receive resources.

The theme ‘Resilience Starts at Home’ invites us to begin with the places where risk is first experienced, and preparedness becomes personal. Yet the responsibility cannot end at the household door. Homes depend on accessible infrastructure, reliable public services, inclusive information, responsive institutions and communities able to influence the decisions that shape their futures.

Disability inclusion brings this interdependence into sharper focus. It asks us to move beyond treating persons with disabilities solely as recipients of protection and recognise them as rights-holders, knowledge-bearers and participants in building resilience.

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Our campaign has been guided by two questions: Bhule Toh Nahi? and What’s Your Plan? Their significance lies not in asking them once, but in making them part of how we remember, govern, invest, design and evaluate. Remembering without institutional learning risks reproducing exclusion. Planning without participation risks designing it into the future. And resilience without accessibility risks leaving people unsafe in the very systems meant to protect them.

On this International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, Build Forward Better is therefore not simply a call to rebuild after disaster. It is a commitment to question what we restore, whose realities inform what we build, and whether the future we prepare for is genuinely accessible to everyone.

This concludes the ongoing sequence of our campaign, not the work itself. The questions remain relevant long after the observance: in our homes, schools, shelters, public infrastructure, climate policies and disaster management institutions. The measure of a resilient society is not merely how well it recovers from disruption, but whether it uses that recovery to make exclusion less likely the next time. Let’s Build Forward Better, where We All Belong.

**Alt Text —** Square watercolour infographic for The Sangyan’s disability-inclusive climate action and disaster risk reduction campaign. The headline reads “Disability-Inclusive Climate Action & Disaster Risk Reduction: Remember the Gaps. Plan for Everyone.” Two panels connect the series: “Bhule Toh Nahi? — Have we forgotten?” illustrates inaccessible shelters, inaccessible warnings and relief lacking essential assistive devices; “What’s Your Plan? — Are we planning for everyone?” highlights accessible warnings and evacuation, universal design, and participation of persons with disabilities in decision-making. An arrow connects the panels, followed by “Remember → Plan → Change” and “Build Forward Better.” Below, a diverse community approaches an accessible shelter with ramps and tactile paving. The footer reads “#NothingWithoutUs | #BuildForwardBetter | #LeaveNoOneBehind.” Four logos (The Sangyan, Project Saralikarana, SDG Infinity Loop, and the Build Forward Better campaign) appear across the top.

Through Bhule Toh Nahi?, we have asked what disaster preparedness must remember and learn from. Through What’s Your Plan?, we have questioned whether that learning translates into inclusive decisions, resources and action. These questions converge in a shared responsibility: to build systems in which accessibility is anticipated, participation is meaningful, and resilience does not depend on whose needs happen to have been considered.

The campaign shall continue moving from these foundational questions towards deeper explorations of disability-inclusive climate action and disaster risk reduction. Because the objective is not simply to remember exclusion, acknowledge it or promise to address it. It is to change the conditions that reproduce it. Remember what has been overlooked. Plan for everyone. Build forward better.