Disability Assessment in India: A Case Study with Socio-Legal Approach and Specific Reference to The United Nations Convention on The Rights of Persons with Disabilities and The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016

Disability is an evolving phenomenon, and one major portion among that is the disability assessment policy of the country. The research through its qualitative case study presents the living experience of persons who had gone through the disability assessment process in India and were denied the disability status. It argues that the picture is quite different in practice, for it lacks logic and poor implementation. To clarify logic, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 which is the central legislation in India dealing with disability, adopted the same definition of “persons with disabilities” as mentioned in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities along with two other definitions but defeats its purpose by restricting and categorizing the disabilities to 21 “specified disabilities” for which a person can apply for a disablement certificate. The research helps in exploring important factors responsible for the exclusion of certain impairments in the disability assessment policy of the country which is based on the pure impairment approach opposing the disability approach.