Abstract
The paper puts forward the argument that the living arrangement of a disabled individual, or his/her marital status in particular, can be taken as a proxy for some very important functionings that constitute his/her 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 functionings 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 functionings. The main source of data is NSS 58th Round (2002), which is supplemented by such other sources as Census 2001.
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Notes
- 1.
The National Sample Survey (NSS), which is one of the two sources of data on disability in India, asks the respondent a set of questions of binary response type leaving no scope for capturing the degree of disability in any particular dimension.
- 2.
One of the few attempts to conceptually relate the two is Mitra (2006).
- 3.
- 4.
The category earn-high includes those working in the household enterprise (self-employed) own account worker, working in household enterprise (self-employed) employer, working as regular salaried/wage employee, rentiers, pensioners, remittance recipients, etc. The category earn-low includes casual wage labourers in public and other types of work, beggars, and prostitutes. The category “working but not earning” includes those who are working as helpers (or unpaid family workers) in household enterprise, attending educational institutions, attending domestic duties only, attending domestic duties and also engaged in free collection of goods (vegetables, roots, firewood, cattle feed, etc.), sewing, tailoring, weaving, etc., for household use.
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Chakraborty, A., Mukherjee, S. (2016). Living Arrangement and Capability Deprivation of the Disabled in India. In: Ghosh, N. (eds) Interrogating Disability in India. Dynamics of Asian Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3595-8_5
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