For a long time, disability entered the Budget largely through welfare and concession. Assistance was framed as support. The disabled citizen appeared at the edge of economic life, acknowledged but rarely integrated into its forward-looking narratives.
In the 2026-27 Union Budget, disability is spoken about in the language of inclusive growth. When divyangjan appear, they do so less as beneficiaries and more as participants. The emphasis is on skilling, employment and integration into sunrise sectors. The verbs are confident and futuristic: Enable, upskill, employ.
For context, Census 2011 records disability at just over 2 per cent of India’s population, a figure widely understood to understate the reality. Labour force participation among persons with disabilities remains far lower than the national average. Against this backdrop, the Budget’s emphasis on work signals how inclusion is now being imagined.
Across this year’s Budget, disability comes into focus most sharply when it can be aligned with labour. The visual that emerges is specific: A person at work, often indoors, often mediated by a screen. Inclusion is most legible when it fits within training modules, employment pipelines and future-facing sectors.
One telling detail is the Budget’s reference to employment opportunities for divyangjan within the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) sector. AVGC appears not merely as a sunrise industry, but as a form of work that sits easily within the Budget’s idea of accessibility, demanding skill and attention but relatively little negotiation with the physical city.
This is not incidental. It reflects a model of inclusion that does not ask very much of public infrastructure. Work arrives already adjusted, and the built environment is allowed to remain largely as it is.
This preference runs through the Budget’s broader treatment of disability. Inclusion is addressed most confidently at the level of the individual. Skills can be imparted. Jobs can be created. Pathways can be mapped. The environment, by contrast, remains mostly intact. Participation is enabled by preparing the worker rather than by reshaping the world the worker must move through.
The shift is real, but it is also selective. Disability enters the Budget most clearly when it can be made productive, legible and contained. Inclusion advances fastest where it does not require the world to change too much in return. This sits uneasily alongside India’s own policy commitments. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act places strong emphasis on accessibility in transport, buildings and public spaces. Yet implementation has been uneven, with repeated government reviews and court interventions pointing to persistent gaps in the built environment. These gaps determine who can arrive, who can stay, and who can move with ease through everyday public life.
Research on disability and employment in India echoes this tension. Access to transport and the built environment emerges repeatedly as a key barrier to participation, often ranking above lack of skill or willingness to work. The problem, in other words, is not only readiness. It is reach.
What emerges is not a failure of intent, but a narrowing of vision. Disability is easiest to picture at a desk, facing a screen, skills aligned and productivity unlocked. It is far harder to picture on a footpath, at a station entrance, or navigating a public building never designed with it in mind.
The change in tone is real. Disability has moved from the margins of the Budget to its growth narratives. But the terms of that inclusion are precise. It is welcomed when it can be trained, placed, and contained. It is less welcome when it asks the world to change shape around it.
The Budget gives us a clear image of inclusion at work. What it does not yet show is whether inclusion is meant to extend beyond the desk — into the streets, stations and buildings that still decide who can arrive, who can stay, and who can belong.
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