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Disability policy is not a sectoral issue; it is a measure of whether the state sees all its people or only the ones who fit its narrow, comfortable definition of ‘normal’, writes Nanjiba Nishat Tafannum

THE clatter of a wooden crutch on uneven pavement echoes through a crowded Dhaka lane, where a young man with one leg drags himself toward a bus that will never lower its steps. According to Wikipedia, in Bangladesh, 16 million people, nearly 10 per cent of the population, live with physical, intellectual or sensory disabilities. Their mobility is restrained because there is rarely any wheelchair access or similar infrastructural support. The government drafts laws in ink yet implements them in air. This implementation failure is not misfortune. It is a manufactured exclusion, born of policy neglect that condemns the differently abled to the margin while preaching inclusion from podiums.

Imagine walking in a village home with a mud floor and no ramp, your wheelchair stuck at the doorway like a silent jailor. A mother carries her autistic son to the market; no school will enrol him. Mostly the reason is teachers are untrained, buildings are inaccessible, and budgets are inadequate. In many cities, blind street vendors are being forced off sidewalks (or not allowed to set up stalls there) because city regulations say those sidewalks must be kept ‘clear’ or ‘unobstructed’. However, those same rules don’t consider the needs of the visually impaired, who are also trying to make a living — ‘they “have to eat too’. Public buses roar fast without audio announcements; job centre lists vacancies that quietly demand ‘full mobility’. Medication for epilepsy runs out when the upzilla complex claims ‘stock exhausted’, a phrase repeated so often it sounds like policy.

The neglect is structural and deliberate in its inaction. ÌýThe 2013 Disability Rights Act promised quotas, accessibility and stipends, yet more than a decade later accessibility remains the rare exception rather than the rule in public buildings. With the disability allowance, when it arrives, you can only buy half a sack of rice before inflation devours the rest. Special-education schools are concentrated in a handful of cities. In rural Bangladesh, a child with Down syndrome is more likely to grow into an adult who has never held a pencil. Training centres reject people with cerebral palsy by pretending it’s about safety, but the real reasons are unwillingness to accommodate them and fear of legal responsibility.

Policy silence has a body count. When the state chooses not to see disability, it chooses outcomes that are both brutal and entirely predictable. Untreated clubfoot becomes a lifelong deformity simply because the early corrective surgery never arrives, turning a preventable condition into a permanent barrier to mobility, education, and dignity. Depression festers in adolescents who are denied sign-language classes, isolated not because of their abilities but because society refuses to speak in a language they can access. Suicidal ideation rises among hearing-impaired youth who cannot find work, companionship, or intimacy in a country that speaks past them and then blames them for failing to ‘adjust’.

Every broken elevator in a government office is not just a maintenance failure. It is a refusal to grant access to a citizen to file taxes, collect documents, seek justice, or even vote without humiliation and physical struggle. Every school staircase without a ramp is a child quietly pushed out of education. Every hospital without braille signage is a patient who must navigate fear in the dark. These barriers are not accidents. They are designed to neglect. They reflect a public architecture, a bureaucratic mindset, and a political culture that assumes the ‘default citizen’ is able-bodied and that everyone else is an inconvenience, an afterthought, or an ‘exception’.

But people are not exceptions. They are citizens whose rights are being structurally deferred. The tragedy is not that individuals are suffering; the tragedy is that their suffering is built into the system. When policymakers write disability out of budgets, when planners forget ramps in blueprints, when ministries treat accessibility as charity instead of obligation, the result is not merely inconvenience — it is exclusion, poverty, and preventable death. Disability policy is not a sectoral issue; it is a measure of whether the state sees all its people or only the ones who fit its narrow, comfortable definition of ‘normal’.

Fixing these demands more than charity; it requires political courage. Mandate retrofitting of public infrastructure with phased, audited timelines. Train teachers in inclusive pedagogy and hold schools accountable when they turn away disabled students. Digitise disability registries so stipends go to bank accounts instead of bureaucrats’ pockets. Enforce job reservations, at least four per cent in the public sector and two in the private, with penalties sharp enough to matter. Subsidise assistive devices the way we subsidise rice, because a hearing aid is as essential as a meal.

Until then the boy on crutches will keep falling, the girl with autism will keep rocking in silence and Bangladesh will keep boasting growth while stepping over its own future. True progress is measured not by GDP graphs but by how gently a nation lifts its most fragile citizens. When policy finally sees the disabled, the nation will stand taller on their strengthened shoulders.

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ÌýNanjiba Nishat Tafannum is a public administration graduate researching social justice and policy implementation in Bangladesh.