New Disability Mobilities and Accessibilities in Urban India
MICHELE FRIEDNER
State University of New York, Stony Brook
JAMIE OSBORNE
Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
Abstract
This article analyzes mobilities and accessibilities in urban India in relation to disability
in India. The concept of disability has become a privileged site for the state and NGOs
to situate development interventions and for corporations to engage in corporate social
responsibility initiatives. These state, NGO, and corporate efforts are directed at a
specific kind of disabled individual and are heavily based upon market logics. Utilizing
data from disability-related conferences held in New Delhi and Bangalore, and other
initiatives developing in these cities for disabled people, this article critically examines
new disability mobilities and accessibilities and argues that a new assemblage of state,
NGO, and corporation is forming around disability and giving rise to a new “disability
marketplace.” This article calls for analysts and activists working in the arena of
disability to be more specific in their treatment of the concepts of mobility and acces-
sibility, and more aware of the consequences of reifying the concept of disability. [India,
disability, corporate social responsibility, mobility, access]
Introduction: New disability mobilities and
accessibilities in urban India
I
n 2013, The Hindu, one of India’s daily newspapers, published an
opinion piece, “The Disconnect with Disability,” by Dorodi Sharma
(2013), a program manager at one of India’s prominent disability
advocacy organizations. The piece decried the fact that disability was
absent from the Millennium Development Goals. Sharma called upon
governments in the global South to include disability issues in develop-
ment agendas and stressed the importance of attending to the experi-
ences of disabled people on the ground in the global South. To visually
underscore Sharma’s point, an image of a disabled man sitting alone on
a tricycle
1
on a wide road, most likely in New Delhi, is included in the
article. The image cuts a forlorn, seemingly abandoned figure.
We found the choice of this image to be interesting because while
tricyle users are highly visible on roads in India, they tend to be invisible
in larger disability rights movements (and discourses).
2
Indeed, informal
discussions with tricycle users in New Delhi suggest to us that these
individuals are often unaware of disability legislation. Meanwhile, many
activist groups in India and around the world have been working to
foreground disability issues and create a legislative-juridicial apparatus
City & Society, Vol. 27, Issue 1, pp. 9–29, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X. © 2015 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI:10.1111/ciso.12054.