IMRAN FARHAT

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People with disabilities make up nearly one-sixth of the world’s population, and yet they remain the most consistently overlooked minority, especially in the Global South. Disability is never a uniform or singular identity; it is shaped by gender, caste, class, sexuality, geography and other social locations that deepen discrimination and exclusion. These intersecting barriers shape everyday access to education, employment, healthcare, safety, justice and public life – not only for persons with disabilities, but also for those who support and care for them.

The philanthropic and CSR ecosystem has mirrored these structural gaps. Although the scale of need is immense, disability continues to receive less than 2% of global development funding, and an even smaller share reaches the Global South or disability-led organisations. Resources focused on women and queer-trans persons with disabilities are rarer still. Much of philanthropy has long been rooted in charity-driven or medicalised approaches – fixating on the individual rather than the systemic barriers that perpetuate exclusion. Even well-intentioned funders can inadvertently reinforce inequity through narrow definitions of “impact”, inaccessible grant-making processes and compliance requirements that exclude the very communities that need to be at the centre.

A moment of reckoning

India’s philanthropic sector stands at an inflexion point. Over the past decade, it has grown in scale and ambition, driving transformative work across education, health, livelihoods and gender. And yet, one truth remains unavoidable: persons with disabilities – especially those with psychosocial and invisible disabilities – are still largely missing from the funding landscape. This exclusion is not accidental; it reflects the extent to which ableism has shaped our understanding of social impact itself.

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Imran Khan