People with Disabilities in India: From Commitment to Outcomes

40. In early 2006, a National Policy on Persons with Disabilities was approved by GoI.
While a welcome measure, it could do significantly more to propose concrete strategies for
realizing the entitlements of people with disabilities. In addition, there continues to be very
limited reference to the role of people with disabilities themselves as active participants in
realizing the objectives of policy. However, despite the overall Policy, sectoral policy has
progressed significantly in education, with inclusion of CWD into mainstream education
increasingly accepted in recent years. At the state level, there remains a basic question in many
states of limited political buy-in by many states to the commitments of the PWD Act. To date, the
only states that have draft disability policies are Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. The latter largely
mirrors the structure and major provisions of the PWD Act, without in most areas providing more
specific commitments or implementation guidance. In contrast, the Chhattisgarh draft state
disability policy can be considered “best practice” within India, and could provide a model for
future national and state-level policy development (see Chapter 7).
41. There is limited awareness of the entitlements of the Act—a key constraint in
implementation. 6 A key ingredient of effective implementation is awareness of entitlements.
Evidence from various sources indicates that awareness of the PWD Act remains very low, and
lower among households with PWDs than others. While awareness of specific entitlements is
higher, it remains low for most benefits (see Figure 3). In addition, for those PWD who are aware
of benefits/services, a substantial share of PWD report difficulties in accessing them. Very little
empirical evidence exists of the interactions of PWD with the official institutional network, but
this study confirms that around 43 percent of those eligible in UP and TN had not received any
benefits or services. Three main challenges in receiving benefits and services include: (i)
physical access problems; (ii) problems with procedures and officials; and (iii) communication
difficulties for disabled people in approaching providers. In addition, the institutions from which
PWD most often reported receiving services and benefits were at district level, though panchayats
were growing in significance.
Awareness of entitlements under PWD Act is also low, though with strong state variation
Figure 3: Share of PWD HHs not aware of entitlements
Figure 3
Transport subsidy
Job reservation
Education stipend
Employ exchange
Subsidy on credit
Aids/appliances
TN
UP
Food ration
PWD benefit
PWD certificate
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Source: UP and TN Village Survey (2005).
42. Implementation is made more challenging in part due to a nodal Ministry with
limited resources and convening power, and weakly functioning coordinating institutions in
much of the country. Implementation is also constrained by a complex institutional framework
for operation of the disability sector in India. The nodal agency for disability is the Ministry of
Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE). There are inherent challenges for any nodal ministry
in a multi-sectoral field as disability. That said, there are areas where having MSJE as lead
agency seems questionable. Two examples are special education and early identification of
6 CAG (2004).
%
xxi