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The overall prevalence of people with disabilities is 4.52% of the population, i.e., 63.28 million, according to the ICMR's publication from the NFHS-5 survey 2019-21.
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
is a party to the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights instrument, international human rights multilateral treaty, treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with Disabil ...
. Legislation that affects people with
disabilities Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physica ...
in India includes the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, the Mental Health Care Act, 2017, the National Trust Act, 1999, and the Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992. People with disabilities in India are faced with negative social attitudes in the wider population.


Prevalence

The number of people with disabilities in India was stated as 21 million in the
2001 Census of India The 2001 census of India was the 14th in a series of censuses held in India every decade since 1871. The population of India was counted as 1,028,737,436 consisting of 532,223,090 males and 496,514,346 females. The total population increased b ...
. In the 2011 census, the figure rose by 22.4% to 26.8 million. According to the 2011 census, 20.3% of people with disabilities in India have movement disabilities, 18.9% have hearing impairments, and 18.8% have visual impairments. The 2011 census additionally collected data on mental disability for the first time, and found that 5.6% of Indians with disabilities fall into that category. However, Anita Ghai offered a higher estimate in 2002, of 70 million. The
World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...
's World Health Survey data from 2002 to 2004 gave a far higher estimate that 25% of people in India have some form of disability, much higher than the world average, but WHO has acknowledged that this survey had serious limitations. A 2009 World Bank report estimated that 5-8% of India's population had a disability. Two analyses of data from a 2004 study in a rural area of
Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...
have estimated the rate of disability to be 6.3% and the rate of mental disability specifically to be around 2.3%. Data collected in a village in
Chandigarh Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the ...
from 2004 to 2005 found the prevalence of disability to be 4.79%. A major study published in 2018 of five sites in India found that 9.2% of children aged 2–5 and 13.6% of children aged 6–9 had at least one of seven
neurodevelopmental disorder Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of mental conditions negatively affecting the development of the nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord. According to the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manu ...
s (vision impairment,
epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of Non-communicable disease, non-communicable Neurological disorder, neurological disorders characterized by a tendency for recurrent, unprovoked Seizure, seizures. A seizure is a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activit ...
, neuromotor impairments including
cerebral palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, spasticity, stiff muscles, Paresis, weak muscles, and tremors. There may b ...
, hearing impairment, speech and language disorders,
autism spectrum disorder Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing di ...
s, and
intellectual disability Intellectual disability (ID), also known as general learning disability (in the United Kingdom), and formerly mental retardation (in the United States), Rosa's Law, Pub. L. 111-256124 Stat. 2643(2010).Archive is a generalized neurodevelopmental ...
).


Legislation


International

India is a party to the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights instrument, international human rights multilateral treaty, treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with Disabil ...
, having signed the treaty on 30 March 2007 and ratified it on 1 October 2007.


National

India enacted the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunity, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act in 1995 to provide recognition to the rights and special needs of disabled people in the country. It also provided for reservations for persons with disabilities in government jobs and higher educational institutions. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 replaced the earlier legislation and increased the number of recognised disabilities from seven to 21. While the 1995 legislation had reserved 3% of government jobs, the new legislation reserves 4%. Under the new legislation, all institutions of higher education run or funded by the government must reserve 5% of their spaces for enrollment for people with disabilities. The rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities are protected under the Mental Health Care Act, 2017. The Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992 created the Rehabilitation Council of India, which is tasked with training rehabilitation professionals and promoting research in rehabilitation and special education. Another law governing disability affairs in India is the National Trust for the Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act, 1999, or simply National Trust Act. This law created the
National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...
, which is a government body that works with volunteer networks and Disabled People's Organizations and also forms local-level committees that appoint legal guardians for people with disabilities deemed to need them.


Government policy

Issues related to disability are addressed by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, which falls under the
Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is a Government of India Ministry (government department), ministry. It is responsible for welfare spending, welfare, social justice and empowerment of disadvantaged and marginalised sections of soc ...
. The government of India has also enacted initiatives such as the
Accessible India Campaign Accessible India Campaign or Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan is a program which is set to be launched to serve the Differently abled, differently-able community of the country. The program comes with an index to measure the design of disabled-friendly b ...
to make public spaces and transportation barrier-free for persons with disabilities. The usage of the term ''Divyangjan'' ("those with divine abilities") has been promoted by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Par ...
as an alternative to the term "Persons with Disability". However, disability rights activists have called it condescending and derogatory.


Social attitudes

Attitudes towards disability vary considerably between regions and sub-cultures. While disabilities do not hold any universal social stigma, there are regions and sub-cultures which do not agree. In some places, people with disabilities are seen as wicked or deceitful, or as unable to progress to adulthood and dependent on charity and pity for assistance. In such scenarios, people with disabilities are often socially segregated, often as a results of ingrained cultural and religious attitudes toward disability.


Intersectional aspects

Most people with disabilities in India and their families are focused on survival in the context of deep poverty. India's
disability rights movement The disability rights movement is a global social movement that seeks to secure equal opportunities and equal rights for all disabled people. It is made up of organizations of disability activists, also known as disability advocates, around ...
, however, mainly comprises elite, middle-class activists who generally mirror the goals of the disability rights movement in Western countries. Disability in India is affected by other social divisions such as class, gender, and
caste A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (en ...
. Statistics show that women with disabilities in India are more marginalized than their male counterparts. Anita Ghai argues that Indian feminism has ignored the unique conditions of women with disabilities.


Culture


Cinema

India's Hindi-language cinema has often reinforced negative stereotypes about people with disabilities, but more recently it has produced several films that have helped raise awareness. A recurrent theme has for a long time been that disability is a punishment for misdeeds, for instance in ''
Jeevan Naiya ''Jeevan Naiya'' is a 1936 Indian Hindi film directed by Franz Osten, and produced by Himanshu Rai for his studio Bombay Talkies. It is famous for being the screen debut of early superstar Ashok Kumar. The film is about the ostracism of danc ...
'' (1936), '' Aadmi'' (1968), and '' Dhanwan'' (1981). Characters with mental disabilities have frequently been used as comic relief, a trend which has been criticized by Dinesh Bhugra as reinforcing social stigma. Atanu Mohapatra identifies several ways in which women with disabilities are misrepresented in Hindi films as compared to men with disabilities: they are included less frequently, they very rarely win the love of able-bodied men despite the converse often being the case, they are much less likely to become self-supporting economically, and they are not included unless they are physically attractive. The decade following 2005 has seen a shift in the representation of people with disabilities by Hindi cinema. The immediate cause for the shift appears to have been an international disability film festival in 2005 facilitated by the Ability Foundation (an Indian NGO). ''
Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
'' (2005) broke new ground by focusing on a female protagonist with a disability, a girl who is blind, deaf, and mute but succeeds academically after considerable struggle. Other films including ''
Taare Zameen Par ''Taare Zameen Par'' (), also known as ''Like Stars on Earth'' in English, is a 2007 Indian Hindi-language drama film produced and directed by Aamir Khan. It stars Aamir Khan, with Darsheel Safary, Tanay Chheda, Vipin Sharma and Tisca Chopr ...
'' (2007) by famed actor and director
Aamir Khan Mohammed Aamir Hussain Khan (; born 14 March 1965) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, and television personality who works in Bollywood, Hindi films. Referred to as "Mr. Perfectionist" in the media, he is known for his work in a variety of film g ...
have explored the lives of people with
dyslexia Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, wri ...
,
progeria Progeria is a specific type of progeroid syndrome, also known as Hutchinson–Gilford syndrome or Hutchinson–Gilford progeroid syndrome (HGPS). A single gene mutation is responsible for causing progeria. The affected gene, known as lamin A ( ...
,
Asperger syndrome Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger's, is a diagnostic label that has historically been used to describe a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and no ...
, and
amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or brain diseases,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be temporarily caused by t ...
, among other conditions. There were some earlier precedents to these more well-rounded portrayals, including '' Koshish'' (1972) and '' Sparsh'' (1980), which explored deafness and blindness respectively. Conversely, some recent Hindi films have continued to display ill-founded stereotypes about people with disabilities. In addition, some
Tamil film industry Tamil cinema is the segment of cinema of India, Indian cinema dedicated to the production of Film, motion pictures in the Tamil language, the main spoken language in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is nicknamed Kollywood, a portmanteau of the nam ...
movies have portrayed people with disabilities, like the movie ''
Deiva Thirumagal ''Deiva Thirumagal'' () is a 2011 Indian Tamil-language melodrama film written and directed by A. L. Vijay and produced by M. Chinthamani and Ronnie Screwvala. The film features Vikram in lead role as an intellectually-disabled man, with an ...
'', which depicts a father who is neurodivergent and his daughter.


Sport

India made its Summer Paralympic début at the 1968 Games, competed again in
1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...
, and then was absent until the 1984 Games. The country has participated in every edition of the Summer Games since then. It has never participated in the
Winter Paralympic Games The Winter Paralympic Games is an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete in snow and ice sports. The event includes athletes with mobility impairments, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. Th ...
.


References


Further reading

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External links


Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016

National Trust Act, 1999

Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992

Mental Healthcare Act, 2017
{{Disability by country
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...