EDITORIALS

A Just Step Forward

The disabilities bill is welcome, but falls short on some key issues.

isability activists have campaigned for many years for a

disability law. Finally, on 14 December, the Rajya Sabha
passed the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, first
introduced in the house in February 2014. This bill, replacing the
Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights
and Full Participation) Act, 1995, is a big step forward in addressing the rights of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in India. The 119
amendments to the bill were cleared by the cabinet on 1 December.
According to the 2011 Census, there are 2.68 crore (2.21% of the
population) PWDs in India. This underestimation is indicative of the
flaw in the 1995 acts inclusion of only seven conditions as disabilities. The amendments bring 21 conditions under the ambit of the
bill (as they do a previously excluded Jammu and Kashmir). This is
sure to increase our estimates of the number of PWDs in the country.
The original bill was an improvement over the 1995 act in certain
basic ways: covering all PWDs, and not just those with the 40%
benchmark disabilities; providing for social security and high
support needs; addressing the guardianship to persons with mental disabilities; and providing for the central government to be able
to notify more categories of disabilities in the schedule.
The amendments have introduced first and foremost a definition
for discrimination in relation to disability, keeping in mind the 2006
United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that India had ratified. However, neither the original bill, nor
the amendments to it address the contentious clause prohibiting
discrimination, which has a vague exception allowing such discrimination if it is shown to be a proportionate means of achieving
a legitimate aim. This, as has been contested by disability rights
activists, leaves the door open to interpretation.
The amendments have also brought the reservation in government establishments for those with benchmark disabilities down
to 4%, from 5% in the original bill (though it is an increase from
3% in the 1995 act), even while having added to the list of disability
conditions that can avail reservations. Curiously, the amendments
have removed the category of speech impairment from this list.
Moreover, despite a Supreme Court judgment in 2013 that reservations should be decided on the basis of the total number of

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

decEMber 17, 2016

vol lI no 51

vacancies in a particular cadre, rather than the posts identified by

the government to be filled by persons with benchmark disabilities,
the bill has stuck to the latter. When questioned in the house by
the opposition, the Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment
claimed that the rules will ensure that this clause is diluted.
The amendments have also expanded the definition of
establishment to include private establishments in addition to
government ones. However, it strangely makes the clauses on
non-discrimination in employment mandatory only in government establishments. In addition, the amendments continue with
the 1995 acts provision of having a chief commissioner and
state commissioners. Neither the commissioners nor any of the
members of their advisory committees are required to be PWDs.
Also, like it does for the institutions wanting to be registered
as ones for PWDs, the bill does not specify the time frame for a
certificate of disability to be issued (though it makes such a
certificate valid across the country). This gives PWDs no way to
address the trials and tribulations they face when tackling the
bureaucracy in receiving what has been their right for years now.
The amended bill does define public buildings and public
facilities and services towards making such infrastructure
accessible to PWDs in a barrier-free manner. However, for all
the benefits that this bill strives to provide, basic issues of accessibility, including to information and communication technology, and certification of disability remain a distant unfulfilled
dream in the absence of any political will. Disability activists for
a long time have been pushing for the passage of this bill. Even as
it has been passed with its amendments in the Rajya Sabha, their
fears have not been unfounded in that the original bill has been
diluted and long-criticised clauses have not been addressed.
Considering the sociocultural prejudices against them, and
the inability, rather the refusal, to keep in mind the needs of
PWDs, this bill, as was the fate of the 1995 act, will go only so far
to ensure for them the rights that should have been a given. Till
they are treated as second-class citizens, and not recognised as
capable individuals in their own right, India will continue to be
an unjust and inequitable society.