Dating app helps Indian people with disabilities find their perfect partner

The Guardian
Priti Salian

Srilatha KS, left, and Ashwin Karthik, have both found disability to be a barrier to romance. Inclov, an accessible matchmaking app, is creating new opportunities for disabled people in India to find love. Photograph: Priti Salian

An app targeted specifically at India’s 26.8 million disabled people promises to create newfound opportunities for striking up relationships

At 33, Bangalore-based Srilatha KS works for a top computer hardware company and takes home a five-figure salary. But at an age when some of her friends already have children, she doesn’t have a partner – something that is highly unusual in India, where the average age for women to marry is 22.

Srilatha’s parents haven’t proactively sought a spouse for her. “They assumed no one would be interested in marrying their paraplegic daughter,” she says.

A couple of years ago, Srilatha began using online dating sites, but didn’t make a connection with anyone. Then, in January last year, she discovered Inclov, the world’s first matchmaking mobile application for people with disabilities and health disorders. Inclov has opened up possibilities for India’s 26.8 million disabled people, of whom 42% never marry.

Since Srilatha became a member, she has found a few suitable matches, and recently decided to take things forward with a fellow wheelchair user. Their liking for each other was instant, but his parents did not approve. “They don’t want him to marry someone with the same level of dependence,” Srilatha says.

Instead – like many Indian parents and relatives of disabled children – they are looking for an able-bodied woman to take care of their son and his home. They feel a school dropout from a rural or disadvantaged background or a divorcee should agree to marry him. Being a “good son”, he doesn’t want to go against the wishes of his parents, who have taken care of his needs all his life.

“Parents have a lot of apprehensions,” says Deepa Narasimhan, the disability and inclusion head at a software company in Bangalore. With rates of separation and annulments much higher among women with disabilities, parents prefer to shelter their children throughout their lives rather than push them into a marriage that may not work.

Srilatha’s story is not an isolated one. The majority of young, urban Indians with disabilities struggle to become independent in a country that offers them limited education and career opportunities, and eventually come to the realisation that they may never get married.

The expectation that women will fulfil the traditional role of homemaker, wife and mother makes it more challenging to find a partner. “Disability and the concept of a perfect woman do not match,” says Kuhu Das, founder of the Association of Women with Disabilities, a Kolkata-based NGO.

She adds that, a few years into marriage – particularly after the birth of the first child – some husbands lose interest and use their wife’s disability as a pretext to send her back to her parents with the child. Her organisation works with the women to help them become financially independent, so that there is no monetary imperative for them to marry. “We counsel them that marriage should not be their aim in life; education and financial independence are more important,” says Das.

Young people with disabilities in Indian cities often find it more difficult to form relationships. “As a society I don’t think we are mature enough to understand that people with disabilities also need a partner to get through the rigours of life,” says Ashwin Karthik, 32, who is wheelchair-bound and quadriplegic and works at ANZ bank in Bangalore.

Narasimhan, who has had spinal muscular atrophy since birth, feels that lack of inclusion in society is the reason behind ignorance and lack of empathy. “When people meet someone with a disability, all they can see is their struggle, which could be overwhelming,” she says.

“Most people feel that marrying someone with a disability would alter the pace of their life,” says Pune-based freelance writer Shweta Mantrii.

On dating apps users either reject people with disabilities outright or ask questions like, “Can you have sex and produce children?” On Inclov’s android application, personal profiles include someone’s level of dependence, medications and therapy for their disability.

“This gives them a clear picture of what to expect, so their interactions begin with pertinent questions,” says Mantrii, 29, who has spina bifida and walks with the support of crutches.

“On Inclov, I am treated like a regular person,” says Ajit Babu, 27, a Bangalore-based disability rights activist. Babu, who has mild cerebral palsy, notes that the app has provided a platform to the many Indians with disabilities who never use dating websites for fear of being judged for their capabilities.

Karthik believes this kind of rejection is one of the reasons why a lot of people with disabilities prefer to marry someone with a disability. “For a relationship to be successful, it is extremely important that there be a sense of equality between spouses, which may be missing if one of them is non-disabled. If one partner [was] put under pressure, the relationship would crumble.”

Babu’s girlfriend Sreepriya, a 24-year-old non-disabled student, says Babu’s most adorable quality stems from the struggles he has encountered in life due to cerebral palsy. “If only we learn to look at the person beyond the disability, the question of disparity wouldn’t arise. It has made Ajit really sensitive to others’ difficulties and he never misses a chance to help anyone, which is what attracted me to him,” she says.