The Union Budget for 2026–27 makes an important acknowledgement: that persons with disabilities deserve access to opportunity, not just support. In a policy landscape that has historically framed disability through welfare and assistance, this in itself is a meaningful shift.
However, access alone does not create equity and opportunity; when narrowly defined, it can quietly become another form of exclusion.
The Budget introduced initiatives such as the Divyangjan Kaushal Yojana, focused on customised skill training for persons with disabilities, and the Divyang Sahara Yojana, aimed at improving access to assistive technology and independent living. These are necessary interventions. They signal a movement away from charity and toward capability.
Yet it is precisely because this moment is important that it must be examined carefully.
The first concern is measurement.
If persons with disabilities are to be recognised as economic participants, they must also be counted as such. Today, India still lacks robust, disaggregated data on persons with disabilities—particularly on women with disabilities, whose exclusion is often compounded and invisible. Without consistent measurement across education, employment, income, entrepreneurship, and access to services, progress remains anecdotal.
What we do not measure, we do not grow, and what we do not see in data, we rarely prioritise in policy or markets.
The second concern lies in how opportunity is framed.
The Budget highlights sectors such as IT, digital services, animation and gaming, hospitality, and food & beverage services as focus areas for skilling persons with disabilities. While these sectors are important, specificity should not become a ceiling.
Experience across industries has shown that when workplaces are designed with the right accommodations—physical, digital, procedural, and behavioural—persons with disabilities perform effectively across a far wider range of roles and sectors: manufacturing, finance, logistics, retail, research, design, public administration, and beyond.
Limiting opportunity to a handful of “suitable” sectors risks reinforcing an old assumption—that disability determines capability. In reality, systems determine capability. When systems are inclusive by design, the range of possible roles expands dramatically.
Assistive technology, too, must be understood as more than a distribution exercise. Strengthening ALIMCO, expanding PM Divyasha Kendras, and creating Assistive Technology Marts are welcome steps. However, assistive devices are not welfare tools; they are part of the economic infrastructure. Their impact should be evaluated not only by the numbers distributed but by the outcomes enabled, employment retained, mobility improved, productivity increased, and independence sustained.
This is where the broader economic framing becomes essential.
Globally, disability inclusion is increasingly viewed through the lens of the Purple Economy, an approach that treats accessibility as a market enabler rather than a moral add-on. The Purple Economy asks different questions: Where does friction exist? Who drops out of systems? What design improvements expand adoption for everyone? Disability, in this context, is not a niche category but a signal that reveals weaknesses in systems that affect many others—seniors, caregivers, people with temporary injuries, and first-time users.
From this perspective, the Budget’s direction is promising, but incomplete.
The real opportunity now lies in moving from programmes to platforms, from schemes to standards, and from intent to implementation at scale. This means collecting better data, broadening the imagination of where persons with disabilities can work, and designing economic systems that do not require people to adapt endlessly to exclusion.
Access to opportunity is a powerful beginning.
But dignity is sustained only when opportunity is open-ended, measurable, and expandable.
This year’s Budget opens the door.
What matters now is whether we build corridors—or quietly stop at thresholds.
Shanti Raghavan is co-founder of Enable India, a pioneering, international, award-winning NGO that has impacted the livelihoods of people across 21 disability types.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
