Barriers Beyond Policy: How Poverty-Linked Stressors Shape the Success of
Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities

Shiv Hariharan

doi:10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i07.028

Title: Barriers Beyond Policy: How Poverty-Linked Stressors Shape the Success of Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities
Authors: Shiv Hariharan
Journal: International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research (IJSSER) ISSN: 2455-8834 Volume: 11 Issue: 7 Publication Date: July 2026 DOI: 10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i07.028
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Shiv Hariharan Singapore American School
MLA 8 Hariharan, Shiv. "Barriers Beyond Policy: How Poverty-Linked Stressors Shape the Success of Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities." Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research, vol. 11, no. 7, July 2026, pp. 3294-3302, doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i07.028. Accessed July 2026. APA 6 Hariharan, S. (2026, July). Barriers Beyond Policy: How Poverty-Linked Stressors Shape the Success of Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities. Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research, 11(7), 3294-3302. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i07.028 Chicago Hariharan, Shiv. "Barriers Beyond Policy: How Poverty-Linked Stressors Shape the Success of Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities." Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research 11, no. 7 (July 2026), 3294-3302. Accessed July, 2026. https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i07.028.
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ABSTRACT: India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 positions inclusive education as a rights-based mandate. Yet, its translation into everyday realities remains uneven. This paper argues that the gap between policy intent and outcomes is best understood through the intersection of poverty and disability—two conditions that are often examined separately but, in practice, reinforce one another in a myriad of ways. Drawing on existing literature and a case study of Samagra Shiksha, it traces how poverty-linked stressors shape unequal educational access and outcomes. For students with disabilities, constraints compound alongside existing systemic gaps, including inadequately trained teachers, infrastructural shortfalls, and limited institutional support. While policy frameworks provide formal guarantees, their design and implementation often rests on assumptions that do not hold true in low-income contexts and households. It also highlights how features intended to promote inclusion, such as home-based education and digital platforms, inadvertently reproduce exclusions when detached from material economic realities. By foregrounding the poverty–disability nexus, it demonstrates that inclusion cannot be achieved through uniform interventions or expanded access alone. Instead, it requires a shift toward frameworks that integrate social, economic, and infrastructural realities into policy design.

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