The earliest disability pension

The introduction of the disability pension is attributed to MahaRaja Swathi Thirunaal Rama Varma (1813-1846), king of Travancore (India). At one of the temple festivals at Trivandrum (capital of Travancore) the king’s elephant took out a stone kept in its mouth and hurled it at one of the spectators, breaking his leg. All the spectators ran away yelling that the elephant had gone mad. The king ordered his men to bring that man to him. He asked him why among the thousands of people assembled the elephant had targeted him alone. He replied that when he was ten or twelve he had hurled a stone at the elephant and had seen the elephant collecting that stone. He felt that some day the elephant would take revenge on him if he were to come before it. Now that over forty years had passed and he had become an old man, he thought that the elephant would not recognize him. But the elephant did recognize him even among an assembly of thousands of people and took revenge with the same stone it had kept with it for the last forty years.

The king, learning that the man disabled by his elephant earned his livelihood as a daily rated worker, was moved and ordered that the man’s medical expenses  be met from State exchequer and that a monthly disability pension of twenty five Panams (currency of Travancore) per month  be paid to him. [Eithihyamaala 21^st edition1998 page 593 Published by Current Books].

This is the first disability pension granted from State revenue and was nearly half a century before Bismarck’s Old Age   and Disability Bill, 1889 showing that disability pension also was a contribution of Travancore to the world.