Mapping of mandated Rehabilitation services in India’s public health system: opportunities for mainstreaming rehabilitation

India has an estimated 440 million people requiring rehabilitation services, accounting for 70% of South-East Asia’s total rehabilitation need. Although rehabilitation is an essential strategy to achieve universal-health-coverage(UHC) and should be accessible to persons with rehabilitation needs, systematic information on services in public health-system are unavailable. Hence a mapping review was aimed at charting rehabilitation services across primary, secondary and tertiary-healthcare levels and identifying gaps relative to population needs. A mapping-review was conducted following the methodological framework for mapping-reviews and reported as per PRISMA-ScR 2020. Eligibility was structured using the Population–Concept–Context(PCC) framework. A three-step search strategy was applied. An initial search of PubMed and CINAHL to identify relevant text words and index terms; a comprehensive search of PubMed, CINAHL and Cochrane Library since inception to September 2025 limited to English language; and screening of reference lists supplemented by expert-consultation. Grey-literature was hand-searched across Indian Ministry, regulatory and international agency websites and the Shodhganga doctoral theses repository. Policy-documents, national-health-programmes and empirical-studies on rehabilitation service provision in India’s public-health-system at national and sub-national level were included; whereas private-sector services were excluded. Records were screened and data were charted and analysed against predefined themes based on the WHO Health-Systems Building-Blocks-framework. Of 820 records identified (549 from databases; 271 from grey-literature sources), 32 sources met the eligibility criteria and informed the synthesis: 4 scientific studies and 28 grey-literature documents covering disability and health programmes (16), insurance and financial-assistance schemes (9), and accessibility (3) mandates. Findings revealed that rehabilitation services were inadequate and fragmented across ministries and provisioned for disability. Services were disproportionate across healthcare levels; desirable at secondary healthcare levels and virtually absent at primary-healthcare, where they are most essential. Workforce estimates indicated severe shortage, particularly 0.58–0.88 rehabilitation-personnel per10,000 populations at community-health-centre and 0.20 per 10,000 at district-hospitals. The two most pronounced evidence gaps are health-workforce and health-information-systems. These findings are based on mapping of policy and grey literature rather than implementation data. Current gaps at national and sub-national levels warrant urgent action on mandating rehabilitation as essential rather than desirable at primary-care-level and shifting the focus from disability-centric to functioning-based services, aligned with WHO Rehabilitation-2030. Findings point to strengthening the evidence-base for developing India’s National Rehabilitation Strategic Framework in order to achieve the goal of rehabilitation for all.