SINCE 1996, when the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 (PWD Act), came into force, by far the majority of cases taken to court have been about equal opportunity in public employment, that is, reservation of jobs for persons with disabilities and related matters such as promotions, identification of posts and eligibility. This struggle is in many ways not that different from the caste and gender battles for affirmative action in government employment. For any marginalised group, including persons with disabilities, equality in employment is a benchmark for full participation in society.
In Union of India vs National Federation for the Blind and Others , the Supreme Court passed on October 8 a landmark judgment in this battle on reservation of jobs for persons with disabilities. The PWD Act, though a restricted statute mainly concerned with providing reservation in jobs and seats in public employment and education, has slowly been nudged by courts, lawyers and disability rights activists to become far more progressive than was ever imagined. Section 33 of the Act states that “every appropriate government shall appoint in every establishment such percentage of vacancies not less than 3 per cent for persons or class of persons with disability...”. Section 32 requires the appropriate government to identify jobs for persons with disability and review the list of identified jobs every three years.
In spite of Section 32, the reality on the ground since 1996 has been that hardly any jobs were identified by the governments as suitable for persons with disabilities. A 2009 World Bank report, titled “People with Disabilities in India: From Commitment to Outcomes”, found that only 10.2 per cent of the posts in all Ministries/departments and public establishments had been identified as suitable for persons with disabilities. The situation in 2013 is not very different. In a 2010 judgment, in Govt. of India through Secretary and Anr vs Ravi Prakash Gupta & Anr , the Supreme Court held that non-identification of posts could not be a reason for the government to evade its obligation to reserve 3 per cent of posts for persons with disabilities.
In the National Federation for the Blind case, the core question was whether the 3 per cent reservation should be calculated on the basis of the cadre strength or the number of vacancies in the identified posts. Cadre strength refers to the total number of posts in the cadre. At present, if at all reservation for and appointment of persons with disabilities are made, it is only on the basis of the vacancies that arise in “identified” jobs, which are far fewer than the total number of posts in the cadre. The Supreme Court held that from a bare reading of Section 33 it was clear that the intention of the legislature was that the 3 per cent reservation was computed on the basis of total vacancies in the cadre strength. This interpretation is significant as it will lead to an unprecedented increase in the number of appointments in State and Central government jobs for persons with disabilities.
One of the most interesting observations of the court in this judgment pertains to reservation in the private sector. Section 41 of the Act states that incentives should be given to public and private establishments so that they provide 5 per cent reservation for persons with disabilities. The Supreme Court held that “on a conjoint reading of Sections 33 and 41, it is clear that while Section 33 provides for a minimum level of representation of 3 per cent in the establishments of appropriate government, the legislature intended to ensure 5 per cent of representation in the entire workforce both in public as well as private sector”.
This expansive observation of the court has gone unnoticed amid the excitement over its statement on reservation based on the cadre strength. This opens up new avenues for implementing reservation for persons with disabilities in the private sector as well. This opportunity was passed up by Justice Ravindran in the judgment in Dalco Engineering Pvt. Ltd vs Satish Prabhakar Padhye & Ors, which stated that the definition of “establishments” under the PWD Act did not include private companies. Now, however, the full Bench of Justice P. Sathasivam, J. Desai and J. Gogoi has clearly moved ahead by observing that the intention of the legislature was to ensure reservation of posts for persons with disabilities not only in the public sector but in the private sector as well.
Draft Bill, 2012 This judgment comes at the right time as the Draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2012, is pending consideration. The Supreme Court even relied on the Bill for its reasoning. However, with regard to equality in employment rights for persons with disabilities, the Bill does little to improve upon the provisions of the PWD Act and does not include the exciting new possibilities that the Supreme Court judgment promises. It does not mandate reservation of jobs in the private sector at all for persons with disabilities although this was clearly included in the draft of 2011. Unless the private sector is mandated to reserve jobs for persons with disabilities, it is unlikely that their conditions of employment in the country will change significantly. If one were to review any significant disability rights legislation in other jurisdictions, one would notice that all of them contain employment obligations for the private sector as well.
This has become even more urgent now as India has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Perhaps, the Supreme Court decision will prompt a revision of the relevant provisions in the Draft Bill. The Draft Bill also needs to address the problematic requirement of “identification of jobs”, which has been reproduced from the PWD Act. Identification of jobs is a concept that is considered outdated by disability rights activists the world over because it has a history of segregating persons with disabilities into the most menial jobs available, making it difficult for them to apply for other jobs. In the last century, the strategy of identifying particular professions for persons with disabilities was practised in the United Kingdom. But, as Anna Lawson, professor at Leeds University and author of Disability and Equality Law in Britain: The Role of Reasonable Adjustment (Hart Publishing, 2008), points out, the occupations that were selected were of low status such as car park attendants and lift operators. In associating disabled people with such jobs, there is the danger of creating or reinforcing negative stereotypes about them and their abilities.
For example, in India, the stereotypical jobs reserved for the blind and persons with low vision are those of music teacher and telephone operator. These difficulties were recognised in the U.K. as early as 1956 by the Piercy Committee in its report of the Committee on the Rehabilitation, Training and Resettlement of Disabled Persons, and although initially the disabled community supported the strategy of identifying certain jobs for its members, such schemes were finally abolished.
In India, the battle for reservation of jobs has often been stalled by the government’s not identifying posts as suitable for persons with disabilities. Such identification is often restrictive and arbitrary; for example, in Group A, the job of an agricultural scientist specialised in econometric analysis is identified as being suitable for an individual who is blind or has an orthopaedic disability but not for someone with a hearing disability. There is also a great variance between the Central government and different State governments on what posts are suitable for persons with disabilities, and this has led to intense litigation.
As the World Bank report says, the list of identified jobs is based on the assumption that the characteristics of impairment are the exclusive determinants of an individual’s ability to hold a position at a particular skill level and such identification ignores the potential influences of individual characteristics (motivation, age at disability onset), the person’s access to employment services, and the characteristics of the workplace and labour market. Even though there is a statutory obligation to identify posts, what posts are identified is left to the discretion of the government, which decides on the basis of the nature of the posts and its requirement. The government often conveniently denies people with disabilities jobs by not identifying enough posts in each department for them. Thus, the whole concept of identification of posts is problematic. The Supreme Court recognised this in its recent judgment, saying: “[E]xperience has shown that identification has never been uniform between the Centre and States and even between the departments of any government. For example, while a post of middle schoolteacher has been notified as identified as suitable for the blind and low vision by the Central government, it has not been identified as suitable for the blind and low vision in some States such as Gujarat and J&K, etc.”
Reasonable accommodation Unfortunately, the requirement of identification of jobs is retained in the Draft Bill, and Sections 32 and 33 of the PWD Act are reproduced, with the only difference being an increase in the reservation from 3 per cent to 5 per cent. If this requirement is removed from the Bill, this, coupled with the obligation the Bill places on the employer to provide “reasonable accommodation”, every job could potentially be suitable for persons with disabilities. The concept of reasonable accommodation, or adjustment, lies at the heart of civil rights advancement in the context of disability. Its significance is that it is a way of accommodating difference. A 2004 baseline study by the European Union Network of Independent Experts of Disability Discrimination, titled “Disability Discrimination Law in the E.U. Member States”, noted: “The notion of ‘reasonable accommodation’ is individualised and involves the person with a disability in an interactive dialogue with the employer to discover the right kind of accommodation needed in the overall circumstances of the case.”
Essentially, the concept stems from a realisation that the achievement of equal treatment can only become a reality when some reasonable allowance is made for disability in order to enable the abilities of the individual concerned to be put to work. In employment, it is the duty of the employer to make reasonable accommodations to any physical features of the premises or to the duties of the job which would place disabled persons at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with those who are not disabled. As stated in the E.U. report, reasonable accommodation as provided in other legislations could include adjustments to premises; reallocation of duties; redeployment to an existing vacancy; alteration of working hours; reassignment to a different place of work; allowing absence for rehabilitation; assessment or treatment; training; acquisition of equipment; modification of equipment, instructions, reference manuals and testing or assessment procedures; and provision of a reader, interpreter or supervision. Thus, the need to identify jobs would not arise at all as every job could be done by a person with a disability. With India ratifying the U.N. Disabilities Convention, the concept of reasonable accommodation has not only been brought under the Draft Bill, but also recognised by the Bombay High Court in Ranjit Kumar Rajak vs State Bank of India .
Finally, only token improvements to the PWD Act have been made in the Bill. Instead of the seven disabilities stated in the PWD Act, the Bill provides for 5 per cent reservation of jobs for persons with “benchmark disabilities”, which means those found with 40 per cent or more of the specified 18 disabilities. However, the provisions for reservation of jobs only mentions that out of the 5 per cent of jobs, with 1 per cent each being reserved for persons with blindness and low vision, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, autism and intellectual disability, and mental illness. These provisions do not adhere to the progressive social model of disability, which does not view disability as a medical impairment (with 40 per cent or more of a certain characteristics) but as a form of discrimination due to social and environmental barriers. If these medical models of understanding disability are reproduced in the new law, one can hardly say that the Bill is in conformity with the U.N. convention, which was supposed to be the basis for the whole drafting exercise.
The Supreme Court decision signals that Indian courts are ready for progressive interpretations of the law on the rights of persons with disabilities. These interpretations have breathed life into the PWD Act and transformed it from a limiting statute into a legislation that has been successful in changing the lives of persons with disabilities, at least in the field of public employment. This judgment bears in it the seeds for further reform. This requires a serious reconsideration of the Draft Bill, which needs to take all these concerns into account. The disability rights movement has worked hard for the last 17 years to make the PWD Act what it is today, and any new legislation that replaces it needs to make a significant improvement to it.
Jayna Kothari is an advocate practising in the Karnataka High Court and a director of the Centre for Law and Policy Research. She is the author of The Future of Disability Law in India and can be contacted at jayna.kothari@clpr.org.in
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