UNVEILING STRUCTURAL EXCLUSION: A LEGAL AND BUREAUCRATIC CRITIQUE OF INDIA'S PATH TOWARD INCLUSIVE EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

Abstract

While India has formally embraced inclusive education through ratification of international instruments like the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and domestic enactments such as the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, 2016 & Right to Education Act, 2009, this legal convergence has not translated into substantive educational justice. This research delves into legal and bureaucratic architecture underpinning India’s commitment to inclusive education for children with disabilities (CwDs), exposing the entrenched forms of structural exclusion that persist despite normative advances. The research contends that prevailing frameworks are riddled with conceptual ambiguity, fragmented institutional responsibilities, and chronic under-resourcing, factors that collectively render inclusion more aspirational than actual. Using a doctrinal legal methodology, the research dissects how legislative drafting, policy language, and bureaucratic praxis function as mechanisms of exclusion that reproduce ableist hierarchies under the guise of inclusion. It assesses disjuncture between policy rhetoric, especially within flagship initiatives like the National Education Policy 2020, & infrastructural, pedagogical, and attitudinal incapacities of the state. Further, it draws attention to the invisibilization of CwDs within data regimes and the disproportionate exclusion faced by those at the intersection of disability, caste, class, and gender. By mapping the interplay between legal norms, administrative design, and socio-political context, the research argues for a paradigmatic shift from performative inclusion to structural transformation. It advocates for the reconfiguration of inclusive education not as a technocratic project of integration but as a rights-based, justice-oriented imperative requiring radical legal imagination and systemic overhaul. Hence, the research calls for juridical and policy frameworks that not only guarantee access but dismantle the normative and material barriers that deny CwDs their rightful place within the Indian education system.