How do you understand disability? Substantiate the need for inclusive policy framework in India in this regard.
10 marks · answer in 150 words · directive: Substantiate
The core of a good answer
Disability is best understood not as a defect within a person but as the result of an impairment interacting with physical, social and attitudinal barriers; since barriers are created by society, India needs an inclusive framework that removes them in education, work, transport and public life.
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What the question asks
Two parts: a conceptual answer (medical versus social and rights-based models), then evidence for why India needs inclusive policy. 'Substantiate' means backing the need with data, law and gaps, not just asserting it.
Answer outline
Introduction
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 defines a person with disability as one with a long term impairment which, in interaction with barriers, hinders full and effective participation in society; this reflects the social model adopted in the UN Convention.
Understanding disability
- Medical model: disability as an individual deficit to be cured; charity approach.
- Social and rights-based model: disability arises from inaccessible buildings, information and attitudes; WHO describes it as interaction between health conditions and environmental and personal factors.
- Disability is diverse: physical, sensory, intellectual, psychosocial, and conditions such as thalassaemia and Parkinson's disease.
Why India needs an inclusive framework
- Scale: Census 2011 counted 2.68 crore persons with disabilities; WHO estimates 16% of the world's population experience significant disability.
- Exclusion from schooling and jobs, inaccessible public infrastructure and transport, stigma, and double disadvantage for women and rural persons.
- Constitutional values of equality and dignity and India's ratification of the UNCRPD in 2007.
Existing framework
- RPwD Act 2016: not less than 4% reservation in government vacancies, not less than 5% seats in higher education, Special Courts in each district, Chief Commissioner.
- Accessible India Campaign (3 December 2015) on accessible buildings, transport and information.
Gaps to address
- Weak implementation of accessibility deadlines, low awareness, poor data, and limited inclusive education and assistive technology.
Conclusion
Inclusion is a matter of rights, not charity; India's law is progressive, and the task now is enforcement, accessible design by default and participation of persons with disabilities in policy making.
Examples and data to cite
- RPwD Act, 2016 (assent 27 December 2016), replacing the 1995 Persons with Disabilities Act.
- India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007.
- Accessible India Campaign, launched 3 December 2015.
- WHO fact sheet (7 March 2023): 1.3 billion people, 16% of the global population.
Facts to remember
- Benchmark disability under the RPwD Act: not less than 40% of a specified disability.
- Section 34: not less than 4% of vacancies reserved for persons with benchmark disabilities.
- Section 32: not less than 5% seats in government and aided higher education institutions.
- Census 2011: 26.8 million persons with disabilities, up 22.4% from 2001.
Where it sits in the syllabus
- GS1: Women, population, poverty, urbanisation
Role of women and women's organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies.
- GS1: Empowerment, communalism, regionalism, secularism
Social empowerment, communalism, regionalism & secularism.