Indian Disability Studies Collective

6th Indian Disability Studies Collective Annual Conference 2026, Azim Premji University Bengaluru

Disability Futures: Intersections, Precarities, and Possibilities In the recent decades in India, disability has emerged as a critical axis of social and political engagement. This paradigmatic shift from approaching disability through a medical model to the social model has meant that disability activism and advocacy in India has increasingly focused on highlighting the pervasive barriers constructed by ableist social structures. Furthermore, building upon and moving beyond the social model, critical disability scholarship and activism is increasingly focusing on a political/relational model of disability which resists the rigid, essentialist separation of ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ and instead recognises ways in which the meanings...