Insights

Decadal anniversaries are often marked by an array of discussions, debates and provocations from all stakeholders—what has been, what could have been, and where we are amiss. These are healthy discussions and do not represent the failure of the legislation itself, but rather a shifting of the start line. The legislators of the RPwD Act, in fact, represent the enviable lot whose enactment has aged rather well. Progressive and paradigm-changing, the RPwD Act unfurled a new deca

Published in: The Indian Express Authors: Nipun Malhotra and Harshita Kumari Recently, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Central Government on a petition seeking the explicit inclusion of haemophilia—a rare bleeding disorder—under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act). The petitioners argued that haemophilia results in serious mobility limitations, continuous medical dependency, and recurrent hospitalisations, affecting everyday functioning. Desp

Recognising care as a constitutional right requires recognising caregivers as rights-holders, not merely as family members performing expected duties. The Covid-19 pandemic, now well behind us, briefly brought to public attention the indispensable yet invisible work of care. For a moment, the world acknowledged the labour that sustains households, communities, and capital. But as the crisis receded, so did the conversation. The pandemic’s visibility for care was fleeting; th

Public discourse around the recently announced census 2027 has been preoccupied with two politically charged questions—the inclusion of caste data and the use of census figures for delimitation. An important point, disability and data, has been completely missed in debates. Historically, persons with disabilities have been among the most undercounted population in India’s census. They were statistically invisible between 1941 and 1971. It wasn’t until 1981 that disability wa