Mar 08 2026 to Mar 08 2026 11 a.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Good design is invisible. Bad design is something women navigate every day.

In public spaces, designers have rarely looked closely enough at how women actually move through streets, neighbourhoods, and informal gathering spaces. In digital infrastructure, women’s needs and safety are an afterthought, if considered at all. In healthcare, the gap is starker still. A space meant for healing leaves too many women negotiating their right to be there, be it fair inclusion in clinical trials or access to safe examinations. 

This panel examines what it would take to change these systems to include those left off the original blueprints. 

A Q&A with the audience will follow.

This event is part of our programming to celebrate International Women’s Day. Music, theatre, and conversation: by women, for everyone.

Speakers

Rajani Surendar Bhat
Interventional Pulmonologist & Palliative Medicine Physician
Dr Rajani Surendar Bhat is a physician with specialisations in interventional pulmonology, critical care and pallliative medicine. She is presently a consultant at SS Sparsh Hospitals, Rajarajeshwari Nagar and has worked with  Apollo Hospital and Fortis Hospital, Bangalore, over the past decade as a consultant. She studied healthcare management from IIM Bangalore and medical law and ethics from National Law School , Bangalore. She has worked in diverse practice settings in India and the United States, ranging from resource-constrained primary health centres in tribal areas and urban slums to academic teaching institutions and quarternary care hospitals. She has a deep interest in public health, rural primary care, health equity, death literacy and healthcare communication. She turns to the arts to nurture a humanistic approach to healthcare.

Kiran Keswani
Co-founder, Everyday City Lab
Kiran Keswani is Co-founder, Everyday City Lab (www.everydaycitylab.com), an urban design lab that focuses on design, research and teaching on Public Spaces. She has had a design practice for over 20 years and holds a PhD in urban design. She has taught urban design studios at CEPT University, Ahmedabad; published work in the Journal of Urban design and in the Routledge Handbook on Urban Design Research Methods. She is the author of the books: The Sacred and the Public and The Making of a Campus: IIM Bangalore (2023) and a recipient of the Earthwatch Europe grant for research related to nature in the city.

Sarayu Natarajan
Founder, Aapti Institute
Sarayu Natarajan (she/her) is the Founder of Aapti Institute. Aapti works on equity and justice for individuals and communities, at the intersection of technology and society in India. Sarayu’s research and practice has focussed on digital infrastructure, citizenship, and on inclusion and governance of technologies. In the past, she used to co-host a podcast on the idea of the Indian republic. She has a PhD in Political Science from King’s College London, a Master’s in Public Policy from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, and a arts and law degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU).

Nia Thandapani
Design Historian & Graphic Designer
Nia Thandapani’s work focuses on colonial and post-independence design in the Indian subcontinent and the United Kingdom and engages with imperialism’s presence within museum and heritage spaces, and its impact on design practice and its outcomes. She is a co-founder of Chandigarh Chairs, a long-term project that works towards a critical re-evaluation of the history of Chandigarh’s modernist furniture. As part of the collaborative duo Studio Carrom, Nia was a 2019 artist in residence at the William Morris Gallery in London and co-created the exhibition Distant Fellowship which explored and problematised Morris’s connections with South Asia. Nia’s creative work includes artist books, alternative museum guides, exhibitions and installations and experimental zines.Dear Kiran,