Deepa Sonpal and Arun Kumar

Whose Reality Counts? Notes on disability, development and participation

Disability continues to remain at the core of underdevelopment, and yet has failed to attract due space in mainstream development processes despite the paradigm shift in conceptualizing disability from the bio-physical medical model to a social model with work premised in a rights-based approach.  Recognizing the need for mainstreaming disability within development by building wider alliances within the development sector, a participatory action research (PAR) project was initiated in Gujarat, India.  Using self-reflexivity, the article examines the experiences of participatory approaches f