Patterns of Social Inequality and Exclusion — Sociology STD 12 Humanities — Question

1. All over the world, there have been people who are differently abled. Disability is understood as a biological given. It is supposed to be linked with the disabled individual’s self-perception.
2. In our country labels such as ‘disability’, ‘handicap’, ‘Crippled’, ‘blind’ and ‘deaf are made synonymously.

However, the very roots of this attitude lie in the cultural connection that views an impaired body as a result of fate. In India, the dominant cultural construction looks at disability as a characteristic of the individual.

3. Now-a-days terms as ‘mentally challenged’/visually impaired and ‘physically compared’ are being used to replace the more trite negative terms such as ‘retarded’, ‘crippled’ or ‘lame’. The ‘diabled’ are caused disabled not because they are biologically disabled but society causes them so.
4. The social construction of disability has a different dimension. We find a close relationship between disability and poverty, malnutrition, mothers weakened by frequent childbirth, insufficient immunisation programs, accident in overpopulated homes. Undoubtedly, disabled people are among the poorest in the poor countries.