Biopolitics and Institutionalizing Disability Governance in Assam: State Versus Non-state Actors

Biopolitics is a Foucauldian concept that refers to the humanitarian intervention and political relations between the administration and the population with comprehensive institutional arrangements for the improvement of the life and welfare of the governed. The present chapter attempts to understand how biopolitics operates in a peripheral region like Assam, particularly in terms of the functioning of the state and non-state institutions for the well-being of the disabled population. Highlighting the contemporary debate on the NGO-ization of disability, the chapter argues that the politics of disablement should not only confine to care and well-being for the persons with disability, but to project disability as a part of larger identity politics and create adequate space in the dominant and developmental discourses where the voice of the disabled people could also be heard.