A new World Bank report finds people
with disabilities among the most excluded in Indian society
Low
literacy and employment rates and widespread social stigma are leaving
disabled people behind. With better education and more access to jobs, India's
40 to 90 million disabled people will generate higher growth which will
benefit the country as a whole.
The report entitled People with Disabilities in India: From
Commitments to Outcomes, says that as the country makes economic
progress, the incidence of communicable disease-induced disabilities
such as polio are likely to fall, whereas age and lifestyle-related
disabilities and those due to traffic accidents are expected to rise
sharply. For example, internationally, the lowest reported disability
rates are in sub-Saharan
Africa
while the highest are in the Organization for Economic Development
(OECD) countries. The report therefore highlights the need for a
multi-faceted approach so that disabled people realize their full
individual potential and maximize their social and economic contribution
to society.
The report finds that people with disabilities are
subject to multiple deprivations. Households with disabled members are
significantly poorer than average, with lower consumption and fewer
assets. Children living with disability are around 4 to 5 times less
likely to be in school than Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste
children. Disabled adults also have far lower employment rates than the
general population – and this fell from 43 % in 1991 to 38% in 2002,
even in the midst of economic growth.
Social attitudes and stigma play an important role in
limiting the opportunities of disabled people for full participation in
social and economic life, often even within their own families. For
example, in surveys carried out for the report, around 50 percent of
households saw the cause of disability as a “curse of God”. Women with
disabilities face numerous additional challenges.
“India has an impressive set of policy commitments
to its citizens with disabilities”, said
Isabel Guerrero, World Bank Country Director for India.
“The challenge facing Indian society now is to translate those
commitments into better lives for disabled people. This includes
identifying disabilities in young children, getting more disabled
children into school and preparing them for the workplace and family
life, and most importantly working to reduce the social stigma which
disabled people face”.
Despite the many challenges, concerted efforts by the
Government, civil society, the private sector, and disabled people
themselves, the untapped potential of this large group of citizens can
be released for their own benefit as well as for society at large.
“Increasing the status and social and economic
participation of people with disabilities would have positive effects on
everyone, not just disabled people” said
Philip O’Keefe, Lead Social Protection Specialist and main author of the
report. “A simple example is increasing accessibility of public
transport and buildings for disabled people – a measure which would
benefit a wide range of people including the elderly, pregnant women and
children. More broadly, people with disabilities who are better
educated and more economically active will generate higher growth in
which everyone will share,” he added.
India’s
implementation capacity is generally weak in a number of areas of
service delivery which are most critical to improving the situation of
disabled people. It is thus not realistic to expect that all the actions
needed by many public and non-public actors can be taken all at once.
The report highlights the need for prioritization of the most critical
interventions to maximize the benefit for people living with disability:
(i)
Preventive care -
both for mothers through nutritional interventions, and infants through
nutrition and basic immunization coverage
(ii)
Identifying people with disabilities as soon as
possible after onset - the system needs major
improvements in this most basic function
(iii)
Major improvements in early intervention,
which can cost-effectively transform the lives of disabled people, their
families, and the communities they live and work in
(iv)
Getting all children with special needs into
school and giving them the skills to
participate fully in family and economic life
(v)
Expanding the under-developed efforts to
improve societal attitudes to people with disabilities,
relying on public-private partnerships that build on successful models
already operating in India.
The study points out that it is neither possible nor
desirable for the public sector to “do it all”. Instead, partnerships
with NGOs, civil society, and the private sector are critical to achieve
effective and lasting results. The key step in such partnerships is
brining disabled people themselves into the policymaking process along
with public and non-governmental institutions.
Some other findings of the report:
• There are substantial differences in
socio-economic outcomes, social stigma, and access to services by
disability type, with those with mental illness and mental retardation
in a particularly poor position. There are also major urban/rural
differences in outcomes, Gender, class and regional variations are also
significant in many cases
• Estimates vary, there is growing
evidence that people with disabilities comprise between 4 and 8 percent
of the Indian population (around 40-90 million individuals)
• Between 1990 and 2020, there is
predicted to be a halving of disability due to communicable diseases, a
doubling of disability due to injuries/accidents, and a more than 40
percent increase in the share of disability due to non-communicable
diseases
• Disabled people have much lower
educational attainment rates, with 52 percent illiteracy against a 35
percent average for the general population.
• Illiteracy is high among children
across all categories, in even the best performing major states, a
significant share of out of school children are those with disabilities
- Kerala, 27 percent, in Tamil Nadu over 33 percent
• Private sector employment incentives
for hiring disabled people are few and piecemeal. In the late 1990s,
employment of People with Disability (PWD) among large private firms was
only 0.3 percent of their workforce. Among multinational companies, the
situation was far worse, with only 0.05 percent being PWD
• In early 2006, a National Policy on
Persons with Disabilities was approved by Government of India. To
date, the only states that have draft disability policies are
Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. The Chhattisgarh draft state disability
policy can be considered “best practice”, and could provide a model for
future national and state-level policy development.
Contact : in New Delhi
Kiran Negi -
knegi@worldbank.org
( Courtesy:
http://www.worldbank.org.in )
To access the full report, visit
:
http://www.worldbank.org/in |
