EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION [ ECCE] IN NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY 2020 AND QUESTIONS ON DISABILITY

Disability as a physical or mental impairment has been with us since the origin of mankind. As science and technology improved, religious notions of disability were out-dated and scientific medical understandings of disability emerged. Disability as a social construct has been emerged questioning the validity of treating disability as a biological presence or absence of something. In this article,the investigators explore the effectiveness of the Early Childhood Care and Education [ECCE] provisions in the National Education Policy of India 2020 to address the problems of disability as a social construct. Investigators contextualize and problematize with the exclusion of social disabilities from the definition of disability and limiting the definition of disability within broad categories of mental and physical impairments. The article explains how ECCE could be an effective and innovative measure to tackle issues of psychosocial disabilities among children.