Reframing disability funding in India

Approximately 68,724 non-profits in India work across the disability sector, constituting 10% of the country’s registered non-profit ecosystem. Their work spans education, livelihoods, rehabilitation, accessibility, advocacy, and community-based support. Despite this substantial footprint, disability remains one of the most under-resourced areas of social investment. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding for disability is estimated at only 1% of total CSR spending, while India’s combined Union and state disability budget amounts to 0.04% of GDP. This is well below countries in the Global South such as Brazil and South Africa, and below OECD averages (2%). Even a recent UNICEF benchmark recommends that 0.1–0.5% of GDP be allocated to disability-related interventions.The government funding and CSR figures critically point to more than a funding gap in India. They reflect how disability sits within the country’s broader development funding architecture, across public budgets, philanthropic priorities, regulatory frameworks, and financing instruments.

Pacta’s recent study on the landscape of funding for disability in India drew on 11 funder interviews, seven focus group discussions with 26 disability non-profits, a survey with 52 disability NPOs, and secondary data on 147 organisations. The study points to a sector with deep community knowledge and sustained institutional experience, working within a funding architecture that does not yet fully support the scale, complexity, and time horizon of disability inclusion.

India’s disability sector operates within a low-investment equilibrium. Limited public allocation, low philanthropic funding, and constrained organisational capacity reinforce one another.

Public funding dominates India’s social sector, with the government contributing around 95% compared to 5% from private philanthropy. Government signals matter. When public systems visibly back and substantially fund a sector, they create legitimacy, continuity, and confidence for other funders.

However, the funding mix reported by disability NPOs reflects a different story. In Pacta’s survey of 52 disability NPOs, individual donors were cited as funders by 40 organisations and CSR by 38. Philanthropic foundations were cited as funders by 26 organisations, while government funding was reported by only 14. This shows that public funding is not uniformly accessible, and that many organisations continue to rely on fragmented or relationship-driven funding sources.

Government and philanthropy bring different but complementary strengths to the disability ecosystem. Government brings scale, public systems, long-term continuity, and the ability to embed inclusion within schemes and institutions. Philanthropy brings flexibility, risk appetite, and the ability to support early-stage ideas before they attract larger institutional backing.

This complementarity is the core of the government-philanthropy jugalbandi. Government signalling creates visibility and confidence. Philanthropy can then support experimentation, evidence generation, and institutional capacity that public systems may later scale or institutionalise.

This reinforcing cycle is visible in sectors such as education and healthcare, which receive significant government expenditure and attract substantial CSR and philanthropic funding. Of the 38 CSR-supported disability organisations in the survey, 33 worked on livelihoods and 30 on education. Government funding reached fewer organisations and was concentrated amongst those engaged in programs of therapy, education, and livelihoods or persons with disability. Rights-based work, research, advocacy, sports, recreation, and systemic reform in disability remain poorly funded by governments and philanthropists alike.

Disability funding data in the social sector is overall invisible. On the private side, databases such as the Hurun India Rich List track high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs), their wealth sources, and their philanthropic interests, but do not tag disability-specific giving data.

On the public side, a majority of government budgetary allocations for disability are not explicitly stated. Only Assam and three central ministries provide disability-disaggregated budgets, and more than half of major family surveys in India do not capture disability-disaggregated data. Monitoring systems also remain thin: The Aspirational Districts Programme tracks 49 key performance indicators, but disability does not appear as a standalone performance category, except for one skilling-related indicator. NITI Aayog’s Output-Outcome Monitoring Framework also rarely treats disability as a disaggregated outcome category. Despite a 2016 circular mandating disability-friendly infrastructure under Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), the absence of any disability-specific reporting in subsequent annual reports or the sector-wise dashboard reveals a scheme long on directive and short on delivery.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPwD), 2016 already mandates 5% reservation in poverty alleviation and development schemes, with priority to women with benchmark disabilities. Stronger implementation and tracking of this mandate can create clearer public signals. But mandates on paper cannot be a substitute for accountability in practice. Disability-disaggregated budgeting, adopting disability outcome indicators across all ministries, and strong monitoring and evaluation are necessary steps. Regular convenings such as the Purple Fest that bring together public agencies, philanthropic funders, researchers, innovators, disability NPOs, and persons with disabilities, also help to change mental models.

The World Bank estimates that excluding persons with disabilities costs India between 3–7% of GDP annually through lost productivity, reduced household incomes, and increased social protection costs. The purple economy is an emerging terminology recognising that persons with disabilities are productive and contributing citizens. A changed approach towards recognising the value of the purple economy when enforced top-down is likely to unlock more philanthropic investments in disability, just as we are witnessing in ageing and mental health today.

States are the primary fiscal drivers of disability support, accounting for 70.2% of disability expenditure. In cash transfers, state allocations are approximately ₹10,008.42 crore, compared to the Union’s ₹290 crore under the Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme. Stronger state and district-level budget tracking can therefore create clearer entry points for philanthropy and implementation partners.

Mandates on paper cannot be a substitute for accountability in practice. The Assistance to Disabled Persons for Purchase/Fitting of Aids/Appliances (ADIP) represents one of DEPwD’s best-performing schemes in terms of both utilisation and beneficiary satisfaction. The scheme’s straightforward objective—providing assistive devices to reduce the impact of disability—delivers tangible, visible outcomes.

On the other hand, the Scheme for Implementation of Persons with Disabilities Act (SIPDA) represents the most critical yet most underperforming scheme in DEPwD’s portfolio. As the umbrella programme meant to operationalise the RPwD Act 2016, its decline from ₹240 crore (FY 2022–23) to ₹135 crore (FY 2024–25) signals systemic failure.

Fund utilisation under certain schemes has been relatively strong, consistently exceeding 90% of revised estimates over the past four years. In FY 2023–24, actual expenditure was ₹129.97 crore against a revised estimate of ₹130 crore, representing 99.98% utilisation, and the scheme supported 335 NGOs benefiting 30,589 persons with disabilities. However, the number of beneficiaries has remained stagnant, fluctuating between 30,000 and 35,000 annually over the past five years against a target of 40,000—meaning the scheme has consistently underperformed against its own objectives by 15–25% each year.

The Universal Disability Identification (UDID) programme represents an important step towards addressing the data gap. By targeting 5 crore registrations by March 2026, it aims to create a comprehensive database that can enable better service delivery, more accurate budget planning, and stronger accountability. A robust UDID system could help close the visibility gap that currently makes disability funding data overall invisible and, in doing so, create clearer public signals for philanthropy and implementation partners alike.

More troubling than inadequate allocation is chronic underutilization. Cumulative underutilisation over four years exceeds ₹1,000 crore which presents a paradox: a severely under-resourced department consistently failing to utilise even its inadequate allocation. The budgetary allocation to DEPwD has remained stagnant at approximately 0.025% of the Union Budget over the past five years even while the Budget expanded substantially. Disability, therefore, represents a declining share of national priorities. The 2011 Census recorded 2.7 crore persons with disabilities, just 2.21% of the population. But this figure is widely considered a significant undercount. To compare, the WHO’s global estimate suggests around 15% of any population lives with some form of disability. Applied to India’s current population of roughly 140 crore, that would translate to approximately 21 crore persons with disabilities i.e. nearly eight times the official Census figure. This gap points to a broader issue that India’s disability data likely suffers from underreporting.

The World Bank estimates that excluding persons with disabilities costs India between 3–7% of GDP annually through lost productivity, reduced household incomes, and increased social protection costs—a significant loss given that persons with disabilities comprise an estimated 10% of the working-age population. Globally, the annual cost of disability exclusion reaches $1.37 to $1.94 trillion, according to The Lancet.

Government funding remains essential, but its design shapes who can access it and what kinds of disability work it supports. In the survey of 52 disability NPOs, only 14 reported receiving government funding. Where public funding does reach organisations, it is concentrated in particular intervention areas: all government-funded organisations in the sample worked on therapy, while 93% worked on education and livelihoods. This leaves less room for the wider spectrum of disability inclusion work, including community-based rehabilitation, independent living, accessibility, family support, advocacy, research, and systems engagement.

CSR and philanthropic funding can create parallel constraints when they prioritise short funding cycles, predefined outputs, and extensive reporting. Among 52 disability NPOs, 38 reported limited donor interest in disability work, 32 reported limited donor understanding, and 50 reported difficulty demonstrating impact. These figures show that fundability is shaped not only by programme quality, but also by public funding design, donor networks, evidence systems, reporting formats, and the time horizon of disability outcomes.

Disability outcomes often emerge over extended periods and require sustained engagement with persons with disabilities, families, employers, educational institutions, service providers, and public systems. Evidence expectations can, therefore, precede the investment needed to build monitoring systems, generate data, test emerging models, and document long-term change.

A stronger government-philanthropy jugalbandi requires public systems that are easier to access and philanthropic capital that strengthens innovation, evidence, and institutional capacity.

A stronger funding architecture requires disability to move from a narrow programme category to a cross-cutting development lens. This is not only an inclusion argument, but a funding strategy. CSR support for disability is already concentrated in livelihoods and education: 33 of 38 CSR-supported organisations in the survey worked on livelihoods, and 30 worked on education. Government funding, though accessed by fewer organisations, was also concentrated in therapy, education, and livelihoods. These patterns show that disability inclusion can be embedded more deliberately within sectors where government and philanthropy already invest.

This means disability should not depend only on dedicated disability funding lines. Investments in education, health care, livelihoods, gender, rural development, poverty reduction, mental health, and elder care can reach persons with disabilities more effectively when accessibility, reasonable accommodation, assistive technologies, and disability-specific monitoring are built into programme design.

Geography also offers an entry point for alignment. Philanthropic funding is often concentrated around corporate presence and operational locations, while the government already uses frameworks such as Aspirational Districts and poverty indices to identify priority regions. Aligning philanthropic disability funding with public priority geographies can help reach underserved and intersectional populations of persons with disabilities, especially where poverty, limited services, and infrastructural barriers intersect.

Disability NPOs are concentrated in the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, aligning with the concentrations of persons with disabilities. Philanthropic funding in India is geographically concentrated, which creates structural disadvantages for organisations operating in certain regions.

The sector also needs stronger connective infrastructure. Limited donor access was reported by 35 of 52 disability NPOs, while 80% reported challenges in corporate networking and 37% lacked dedicated staff responsible for approaching corporate donors. Intermediaries, collectives, and organisational development support can help address this gap by improving discoverability, simplifying due diligence, supporting shared learning, and helping disability NPOs engage government and philanthropy with a stronger sector-wide voice.

Government signals do more than allocate funds. They shape visibility, legitimacy, and entry points for philanthropy. Stronger public commitment through higher allocations, better implementation, and stronger accountability can help disability move from policy recognition to institutional priority.

This requires better data and monitoring.

Traditional grants and public funding alone may not meet the full financing needs of disability inclusion. The sector also needs funding systems that allow experimentation while retaining transparency and accountability.

For many smaller and community-based disability NPOs, registration, reporting, and grant eligibility requirements can be difficult to navigate. A more proportionate approach to compliance would not mean lowering standards. It would mean aligning requirements with an organisation’s size, capacity, and risk profile, so that accountability remains intact without excluding organisations closest to communities. Government has used differentiated regulatory approaches in other sectors, such as MSMEs. A similar approach for non-profits working in disability could help more organisations access public and philanthropic funding, while creating space to test outcome-based financing, community-based financing, and blended finance models.

Trust-based philanthropy also has a specific role in this architecture. It can support disability NPOs before their work meets the scale, evidence, or documentation requirements of compliance- or impact-oriented funding. Flexible and patient capital can help organisations test ideas, strengthen internal systems, build evidence, and sustain community relationships.

Blended finance can extend this alignment by using public or philanthropic concessional capital to reduce risk and attract private investment into areas with high social value but limited commercial confidence. Assistive technology offers one example. Globally, over 2.5 billion people rely on assistive technologies, while more than 900 million people in low- and middle-income countries lack the assistive products they need. The Accessible and Assistive Technology Growth Fund uses catalytic first-loss capital to draw private investment into assistive technology enterprises, with a target size of $ 100 million and typical investments of $ 2-5 million.

India’s disability sector does not lack commitment, expertise, or community knowledge. It needs a shared funding architecture that reflects how disability inclusion is built: through public signals, accessible government funding systems, philanthropic risk capital, NPO expertise, and ecosystem infrastructure.

Government can signal priority, finance scale, simplify access, improve procurement pathways, and embed disability within public systems. Philanthropy can take early risks, strengthen organisations, support evidence, and fund the institutional and ecosystem infrastructure that public programmes often do not cover. Disability NPOs and persons with disabilities must shape how these investments are designed and delivered.

The opportunity lies in aligning these roles more deliberately. When public systems, philanthropic funders, disability NPOs, and persons with disabilities work with greater clarity and coordination, disability inclusion can move from isolated interventions to a stronger place within India’s broader development architecture.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Nivedita Krishna, founder and Kaye Lushington, lead – research, Pacta.