Living Arrangement and Capability Deprivation of the Disabled in India
Achin Chakraborty and Subrata Mukherjee
IDSK Occasional Paper No 42
Abstract
This paper puts forward the argument that the living arrangement of a disabled individual, or her/his marital status in particular, can be taken as a proxy for some very important functioning that constitute her/his well-being, viz. emotions (being able to have attachments to others, able to love etc) and bodily integrity that includes ‘opportunity for sexual satisfaction’ among others. In the process we contrast our approach to the one that drags the notion of care into the relationship between disabled and non-disabled partners. Based on this conceptual foundation, which draws on the list of essential human functioning constituting freedom in the sense of human flourishing, as articulated by Martha Nussbaum, we examine the quantitative connections between the living arrangement, marital status, and other indicators that roughly correspond to various other relevant functioning. The main source of data is NSS 58th Round (2002), which is supplemented by such other sources as Census 2001.