Draft disability policy open for feedback
- Draft of national policy for persons with disabilities was recently released.
- The New policy will replace the 2006 policy.
Need of new policy
- India’s signing of UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- New disability legislation which increased no. of disabilities from seven conditions to 21
- Party to Incheon Strategy for Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities, 2013-2022
- Prepared under UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
- Identifies 10 goals for Asia-Pacific countries to ensure inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities and conformity with SDG 2030.
Highlights Of Policy Document
- Principle: Inclusion and empowerment of PwD by providing a mechanism that ensures their full participation in society.
- It highlights detailed commitment to education, health, skill development and employment, sports and culture, social security, accessibility and other institutional mechanisms.
- There is absence of any commitment to political uplift of persons with disabilities.
About political participation
- Article 29 of Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- To ensure PwD can effectively participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others.
- Incheon goals: Promote participation in political processes and decision making.
- Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016:
- It recognises the political domain where disabled people should be allowed to realize their human rights and fundamental freedoms.
- The exclusion of disabled people from the political space happens at all levels of the political process in the country, and in different ways.
Reasons for political exclusion
- Section 11 of Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act:
- Ensure polling stations are accessible to PwD
- All materials related to the electoral process are easily understandable by and accessible to them.
- Disabled people still report accessibility issues.
- No widespread adaptation of braille electronic voting machines and wheelchair services at all polling centres.
- Lack of live aggregate data on exact number of disabled people in every constituency furthers their marginalization.
- Lack of accessible space for party meetings
- Inaccessible transport for campaigning
- Attitudinal barrier among voters and party leaders are also contributing factors.
- Disabled people are not represented enough at all three levels of governance.
Way ahead
- inclusiveness and empowerment cannot be achieved without political inclusion.
- Policy can follow a four-pronged approach:
- Building capacity of disabled people’s organisations
- Empowering them through training in electoral system, government structure, and basic organisational and advocacy skills
- Creation, amendment or removal of legal and regulatory frameworks by lawmakers and election bodies to encourage political participation of the disabled
- Inclusion of civil societies to ‘conduct domestic election observation or voter education campaigns
- Framework for political parties to conduct meaningful outreach to PwD when creating election campaign strategies and developing policy positions’.