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In News
- Recently ,The Department of Empowerment of Person with Disabilities (DoEPwD) released the draft of the national policy for persons with disabilities (“Policy”) .
Need
- The necessity for a new policy was felt because of multiple factors such as
- India’s signing of the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
- Enactment of a new disability legislation (Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016) which increased the number of disabilities from seven conditions to 21 and
- Being a party to the Incheon Strategy for Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities, 2013-2022 (“Incheon commitment”).
- These commitments have changed the discourse around disability by shifting the focus from the individual to society, i.e., from a medical model of disability to a social or human rights model of disability.
About the policy
- It replaces the 2006 policy .
- The policy document highlights a detailed commitment to education, health, skill development and employment, sports and culture, social security, accessibility and other institutional mechanisms.
Objectives
- It aims to showcase the Government’s commitment to the inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities by providing a mechanism that ensures their full participation in society.
Laws and Legislations
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Challenges faced by persons with disabilities
- Political empowerment and the inclusion of the disabled are an issue that has not found traction in India’s democratic discussion.
- India does not have any policy commitment that is aimed at enhancing the political participation of disabled people.
- The exclusion of disabled people from the political space happens at all levels of the political process in the country, and in different ways.
- Political parties in India still do not find the disabled as the large electorate to specifically address their needs.
- The lack of live aggregate data on the exact number of the disabled people in every constituency only furthers their marginalisation.
- Inadequate representation
- Representation plays an imperative role in furthering the interests of the marginalised community.
- Disabled people are not represented enough at all three levels of governance.
Ways to handle them
- The goal of the policy document — of inclusiveness and empowerment — cannot be achieved without political inclusion.
- The policy can follow a four-pronged approach:
- Building the capacity of disabled people’s organisations and ‘empowering their members through training in the electoral system, government structure, and basic organisational and advocacy skills’
- The creation, amendment or removal of legal and regulatory frameworks by lawmakers and election bodies to encourage the political participation of the disabled;
- inclusion of civil societies to ‘conduct domestic election observation or voter education campaigns’ and
- a framework for political parties to ‘conduct a meaningful outreach to persons with disabilities when creating election campaign strategies and developing policy positions’.
- Central and State governments must work together with other stakeholders to “make the right real”.
- A few States have begun the initiative at local levels to increase participation.
- For instance, Chhattisgarh started the initiative of nominating at least one disabled person in each panchayat.
- A few States have begun the initiative at local levels to increase participation.
[Q] Persons with disabilities are not represented enough at all three levels of governance in India ,Comment
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