Martand Jha

The JNU Fee Hike Affects Students with Disabilities More Than We Realise

In India, where a large number of disabled students come from poor families, the demand of a household to pay thousands in rent for higher education is a tall one.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University fee hike issue has not come to a halt yet.

Students are still demanding a complete roll back of the hike and the nullification of the draft hostel manual which was passed without proper consultation by the JNU administration without proper consultation from all the stakeholders concerned. One such group of students who are already a marginalised minority within the campus are students with disabilities. Their complaint is two pronged, the first is about the hostel fee hike itself which is a concern shared by every hostel resident in JNU.

The second complaint is that if the new hostel manual gets implemented, students with disabilities in the campus would no longer be given the mandated 5% reservations in the allotment of hostel rooms, which was still firmly being implemented as per the last hostel manual. This 5% quota in hostel rooms for differently abled students was implemented to be completely in sync with the reservation of differently abled students in education as per the Rights to Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.

Till now, the JNU administration has followed the norm that every student with disabilities who has got admission in the campus would get a hostel room on a priority basis. Even such students who belonged to Delhi-NCR region could claim hostel rooms, if they are differently abled.

Such an option was not available to other students from the Delhi-NCR region. The reason that preferential treatment has been rightly given to students with disabilities in JNU is so that education can be made more accessible to them, thereby making lives easier for those who are otherwise a marginalised minority as a group, both inside as well as outside the campus.

Even an institution like JNU has, however, often failed to implement the disability reservation in the campus both in faculty recruitment and student selection from time to time.

Also read: JNU Students: You Are Our Only Hope

But that is a matter for another debate. Now, students with disabilities fear that whatever little was being done for them until recently is being diluted under the new hostel rules.

A logical question arises, why do students with disabilities want a status quo on their hostel quota? The reason is pretty simple. First, hostels are a basic necessity for differently abled students because it eases the process of their physical presence at their respective schools and centres as compared to a situation where they would have to live outside the campus and travel from there.

Again, living outside the campus and travelling from their place of accommodation to the campus are two different problems. First, because many differently abled students come from financially weaker sections of society, they would be unable to sustain themselves outside the JNU campus. Secondly, Indian society still discourages persons with disabilities to enter higher education and therefore, if a situation arises where the parents of a differently abled student have to shell out thousands of rupees just on room rent, there is a great chance that such a student would have to eventually quit studying and settle for a job instead.

Another scenario arises where a student with disability can afford to stay outside the JNU campus or if she or he has a house in the Delhi-NCR region. In this scenario, the problem of transportation is a large one. Sadly, our public transportation is not as conducive for persons with disabilities as it should be in a national capital. A big city like Delhi where going from one end of the city to another can easily take two hours on an average, it would be quite a frustrating and tedious task for differently abled students to spend three to four hours of their day just on travelling. It would just add to the list of their problems.

Also read: Social Justice in the Times of JNU Protests

Keeping all such scenarios in mind, the last hostel manual of JNU ensured that all students with disabilities are entitled to get hostel accommodation on a priority basis. This used to be an ideal case scenario and a model which other state universities should have followed in order to encourage differently abled people to enter higher education – a step which the government boasts that it encourages in letter and spirit. However, the changes in the new draft manual of JNU hostels threaten to strip away these basic necessities and the ideal which was followed for so long.

Among the cacophony of mainstream voices from within the campus, issues like these get dwarfed and therefore not highlighted because this particular aspect of the issue impacts only 3-4% of the students within the campus. Even within JNU, the politics of disability activism within the JNU students union is abysmally low. None of the office bearers of JNUSU are persons with disabilities.

The reason why differently abled candidates are not brought to the forefront of campus elections in JNU taps into a bigger problem as one does not usually see differently abled politicians in India, barring extremely rare cases, either.

Ideally, the JNUSU should earmark at least one seat in their committee for which only persons with disabilities should contest in the student body election. This step would go a long way in making JNUSU diverse and would help raise issues related to disability.

This seems too ideal, but JNU is a place which can afford to be idealistic and has shown the way to society to think out of the box.

Martand Jha is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

Madhya Pradesh: Congress Goes Ahead With ‘Populist’ Process to Hire College Faculty

A process initiated by the BJP ignored UGC guidelines to interview candidates for the post of assistant professors.

Last year, an exam conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission to recruit assistant professors in the state’s various colleges and universities was strange and unique. The major fault was that the final results of this examination were announced just on the basis of an MCQ (multiple choice question) written examination and the mandatory interview stage (as per UGC guidelines) was completely scrapped.

Those who had qualified argued that they were eligible candidates, that they had passed the NET (National Eligibility Test) exam. They said many of the qualified candidates held doctorates, with some teaching experience, and therefore questioning the validity of the test is just nitpicking.

While these may be true, the arguments do not address the issue of bypassing the UGC guidelines and hiring candidates solely on the basis of on an MCQ test.

One has to keep in mind that in this case, the appointments are not of lower-division clerical staff, where the interview process might not be essential. Interviews are paramount to the appointment of higher education staff. The point is not that highly qualified candidates did make it into the final list. It is crucial to understand that because of the interviews being scrapped – in the name of fastening the examination process – many talented, skilled and experienced candidates could not be selected.

Also Read: Madhya Pradesh College Faculty Recruited Based on Multiple-Choice Questions

In simple terms, a post-graduate with NET qualification and a candidate with a doctorate and teaching experience as adhoc faculty are now considered to be on the same level. Is this a fair comparison? To someone with even basic knowledge of the demands of the education system, this should raise alarm bells.

The decision was taken under the previous BJP government. The advertisement to hire assistant professors was issued hastily, just six months before the state assembly elections. The idea was to conduct the entire process before the elections, even if that meant scrapping the necessary interview round. This was precisely the reason why a corrigendum was issued in May 2019, saying that for 2018 only, it had been decided that the interview process would be scrapped.

The exam was conducted in June 2018 and by August 2018, the list of selected candidates was published. At that time, certain sections of media praised the BJP government’s decision to complete the process in a quick manner. The Congress, then in the opposition, called it a political gimmick.

No change in status

After the state elections in December 2018, the Congress returned to power after 15 years. The aggrieved candidates hoped that the new government would rectify the mistake. The demand was to either introduce the interview stage within the same examination or to conduct the examination again, with both written and interview stages. There was also a demand to reintroduce the academic performance indicators (API), which were also scrapped in the 2018 exam.

Ten months down the line, nothing has changed except the government in the state. Though the Congress government had time to rectify the recruitment process, it chose not to do so.

Just a few days ago, the Madhya Pradesh higher education department announced on its website that all the candidates who qualified through the exam can report to the department along with the necessary documents to complete the recruitment process.

If the appointments are made, it would mean that the Congress government approves of this populist decision. It would also indicate the major rot that has entered the higher education system. Once appointments are made, it will set a bad precedent for other state governments and incentivise a populist approach.

At the end of the day, winning elections remains the only goal of political parties. The ends have become more important than the means.

Martand Jha is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

Are Disability Reservations a Thing of the Past in Faculty Recruitment?

The challenges underprivileged groups will now face under the new 13-point roster system are ones that differently abled people faced even before.

The Supreme Court’s verdict upholding the department-wise reservation roster system, also known as the 13-point roster system, has left many students and academics disappointed. Under-privileged groups see it as diluting the principles of reservation in faculty recruitment to colleges and universities.

Under the new roster system, a university department is considered as a ‘unit’ for implementing reservation – as opposed to the whole university being a unit under the previous 200-point roster system.

Under the new system, if a department has 13 vacancies, the first, second and third seat are unreserved, the fourth seat goes to the OBC category – and in this manner, the seventh seat is for scheduled castes, the eighth and twelfth for OBCs again, and the fourteenth for scheduled tribes.

In other words, a department needs to recruit at least four people for an OBC candidate to access a reserved faculty position, at least seven for an SC candidate and at least 14 people for a Scheduled Tribe candidate.

Also read: Apathy Getting in the Way of Implementation of Reservations for People With Disabilities

If a department has only three vacancies, no reservation will be implemented. In higher education institutions, the vacancies for faculty recruitment are limited – so faculty reservations are very likely to be diluted.

Yet all the commentary on this issue makes no mention of its effect on persons with disabilities. In the debate of 13-point roster system, they are not even in the picture.

This is not surprising – our society suffers from an ‘ableist’ mindset, so neither caste groups nor political parties will blink an eye about the disappearance of disability reservations, even though India has at least 40 million persons with disabilities, according to a 2007 World Bank report.

Under the Rights to Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016, differently abled candidates are provided 4% reservation in government jobs. Every government establishment is duty-bound to maintain a 100-point vacancy-based reservation roster.

Also read: The Disabled as Vote Bank: Is it an Oxymoron?

Under this roster system, the first, 26^th, 51^st and 76^th seats are reserved for Persons with Disabilities. If a department has only one vacancy, that seat must go to person with disability. But that never happens. Recruitment boards and interview panels discard candidates using the usual phrase, ‘Not Found Suitable’. So even under old roster system, the implementation of disability reservation was very poor.

This means that the challenges SC, ST, OBC groups will face now, under the new roster system, are ones that differently abled people have already faced under the old roster system.

Also read: India Has a Long Road Ahead to Combat Challenges Faced by Persons With Disabilities

Unlike SC, ST and OBC reservation – called “vertical reservation” – the disability reservation is “horizontal reservation”, because a person with disability can come from any caste group. Horizontal cuts across vertical reservation, in what is called interlocking reservation. If, in a given year, there are two vacancies disabled faculty, and one appointee is from a scheduled caste and the other unreserved, then each is adjusted against the appropriate ‘vertical reservation’ roster.

Even under the old roster system, which marginalised groups want brought back, disability reservations were appallingly implemented. So the new 13-point roster brings many difficult questions to the table. Is disability reservation simply a thing of past in faculty recruitment?

One hopes not. The able-bodied mindset may see ‘disability’ as ‘inability’. But we cannot treat disability reservation like charity, rather than what it is: a right of the differently-abled.

Martand Jha is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

Madhya Pradesh College Faculty Recruited Based on Multiple-Choice Questions

Shortly before polls, the state cabinet decided to hasten appointments by scrapping any interview round to select assistant professors.

Bhopal: A strange situation has emerged in the recruitment of assistant professors to universities and colleges in Madhya Pradesh. In June 2018, some 20,000 candidates took the Assistant Professor Examination, competing for three thousand posts advertised by the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission (MPPSC) – which was conducting this exam after a gap of 25 years. The results of the exam were released in just three months, a record in itself. A layman might applaud the MP government for speeding the recruitment process. Except there is a glitch.

The original advertisement by MPPSC prescribed both written exams and interviews to qualify for the posts. On May 9, however, it put out a small corrigendum that the interview round had been scrapped completely. Assistant professors would be recruited simply through the written examination. The University Grants Commission rules state that the selection process for these posts must include an interview. These rules and regulations are not to be treated lightly. Teachers are the heart of academic culture in the country; literally responsible for imparting knowledge to generations of students.

According to Jagdish Chandra Jatiya, an officer of the state Department of Higher Education, the reason for scrapping the interview process was time. To fill the 3,000 posts, around 10,000 candidates would have to be called in for interviews, to maintain an approximately 1:3 ratio between the number of aspiring and qualifying candidates. This would have been time-intensive, so the state cabinet decided to create an exception for just this year.

The decision to hasten the recruitment process was made within a month of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s announcement that he would abolish contractual employment, create one lakh permanent government jobs and fill 31,000 vacant posts for assistant professors across the state.

The circumstances suggest that the entire recruitment process was hastened, at great cost to quality, in order to release the results before the state assembly polls on November 28.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Credit: PTI

Is simply a written exam enough of a basis for selecting who will shape the state’s higher education system for the next three or four decades? Being a teacher is about more than academic knowledge – it’s also about being willing and able to build interest in a subject and convey it to the weakest student in the classroom. Interviews allow a selection panel to assess both the personality and the intellectual qualities of a candidate.

A teacher can be both passionate and compassionate – a second guardian, a mentor or a friend to students. These qualities cannot be judged by just a written, multiple-choice examination.

Along with the interviews, the MPPSC also scrapped the Academic Performance Indicators (API) essential to judging candidates for a teaching job in universities and colleges. The API assigned points for candidates’ educations, teaching experience, publication record and other qualifications.

Without this process, a candidate with a masters degree and a NET (National Eligibility Test) qualification is treated equally with somebody who has a doctorate, published research and years of teaching experience.

Also read: Mediocrity in Higher Education Is a Bigger Blow Than India Acknowledges

India’s higher education system is in an alarming condition. Many state universities and colleges are in shambles. The intellectual environment there is degrading rapidly, making them averse to good research. In such a situation, recruiting teachers through just an MCQ examination it is a great disservice to students, and the country at large.

To rectify this gross injustice, one approach would be to scrap the whole examination and bring out a new notification. Another is to re-introduce the interview round in the current examination. which would require re-releasing the written exam results, to make sure that the desired ratio of candidates to vacancies is maintained. If nothing is done, it sets a very poor precedent for the future of higher education.

Martand Jha is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

Delhi University’s Go-Slow on Filling Vacancies Has Failed Teachers and Students

As the new session is about to start, there is still no sign of the much-promised faculty recruitment despite posts being advertised and thousands of candidates having paid crores of rupees as application fee.

It was exactly a year ago when a lot of buzz was created after Delhi University advertised nearly 1,500 vacancies for the post of assistant professors in various colleges and across various departments. This online application process for recruitment started from May and went on till July. Thousands of job aspirants applied for these vacancies hoping that they would be selected as permanent faculties in University of Delhi and their standard of living would improve.

Just three months before this, which is in January-February 2017, Delhi University also advertised vacancies for assistant professors, associate professors and professors at the university level. For the post of assistant professors, a total of 378 vacancies were advertised, for associate professors, 92 vacancies were advertised for associate professors and 32 vacancies were advertised for the post of professor. Here also, the numbers of candidates applying were in thousands but relatively fewer than the number of candidates which applied for the posts in colleges.

The application for one post in one college cost Rs 500 for people in the unreserved and OBC (other backward classes) categories. Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Women and Persons with Disabilities were exempted from paying any application fee. But those who paid, usually did so in thousands because everyone wanted to appear in interviews of more colleges. For example, a candidate who is applying for the assistant professor’s post in political science would naturally want to appear in interviews of at least five colleges. The total amount paid by candidates as application fee must be reaching into crores of rupees. These people didn’t pay this much so that the system fails them.

Prakash Javadekar at Parliament house during the monsoon session in New Delhi. Credit: PTI

In 2016, HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had said that his ministry would push for a recruitment drive in all major institutions and that all vacant positions should be filled by 2018. In March 2017, he said more than 9,000 ad hoc posts of teachers in Delhi University would be regularised within a year. Credit: PTI Files

As per reports, in December 2016, human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar had said that his ministry would push for a recruitment drive in all major institutions and that all vacant positions should be filled by 2018. Later, in March 2017, the minister said more than 9,000 ad hoc posts of teachers in Delhi University would be regularised within a year. All this big talk seems to be falling apart after a year has passed. Till now, even interviews for the said posts are yet to be taken. Barring the law faculty in DU where recruitment was done, in most of the colleges and departments, the recruitment hasn’t moved much.

In December, the university had asked various colleges to shortlist the candidates after screening the applications. Many of the departments did release the screening updates of shortlisted candidates, but the process which was moving slowly almost froze after the University Grants Commission (UGC) came out with a notification on March 7. “In the letter to all the central/state universities and those institutions receiving aid from public funds (except minority institutions), Dr Dev Swarup, joint secretary, UGC, directed them to prepare fresh rosters for the appointments of faculty members within one month”, DNA newspaper reported.

As per this new UGC formula, the reservation for SC/ST/OBC in the recruitment of all levels of teacher posts will be calculated by treating each department of the university/institution as a “unit”. This will lead to a very sharp decrease in the recruitment of reserved category candidates. This means that smaller departments with less number of posts could never have a reserved category candidate, especially SC, ST and Persons with Disabilities (whose representation is anyway abysmally low in most of the institutions).

The UGC directive came after a decision by Allahabad High Court and later upheld by the Supreme Court. Although, after a furore created by this UGC directive, the government filed a special petition seeking stay on Allahabad High Court judgement in the Supreme Court. Although, UGC is yet to remove this directive from its website. As per calculations, if the new UGC directive gets implemented, in many departments the number of seats SC and ST candidates might reduce by 60 to 80%.

Due to the nature of this directive, this move is seen as being anti-Dalit and minorities. When the posts were advertised last year, it was applauded as a move to end ad hocism in DU and start the absorption process of thousands of teachers who are working as ad hoc faculty for years now. At present, the Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) is protesting against this new UGC directive and had announced boycotting to evaluate the answer sheets of students, as a counter measure.. However, this extreme move was later called off.

The jobs of thousands of ad hoc teachers are also threatened if the new UGC directive gets implemented. Rather than being absorbed in the system, these teachers could be shown the door by the university and college administrations. The new session in DU is about to start just a month from now and if this issues doesn’t get resolved, it will surely harm the smooth functioning of the university.

If teachers, who build the future of nation, are dissatisfied, how can one expect the country’s future to be better? If as a society, we continue to fail our teachers and their aspirants, there is not an iota of chance that this system will pass the students. To conclude, this issue of faculty recruitment doesn’t seem to resolve at present and in near future, while thousands of candidates who applied for these posts last year have almost lost the hope of being recruited this year. Maybe 2019 will bring some change….

Martand Jha is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

Apathy Getting in the Way of Implementation of Reservations for People With Disabilities

Institutional apathy has meant that despite having a legal right, persons with disabilities struggle to get government jobs and admission to educational institutions.

The reservation for persons with disabilities in India is now more than two decades old. When the Persons with Disability Act, 1995 was passed by parliament, it was seen as a landmark in the history of disability rights legislation. Under the Act, persons with disabilities got 3% reservation in both government jobs and higher educational institutions. The Act itself was a result of decades of struggle by various disability rights groups and hence the PWD Act, 1995 was considered a big win for all stakeholders involved and millions of persons with disabilities in the country.

Persons with disabilities constitute one of the largest minority groups in India, with more than 26.8 million people as per the 2011 Census and around 80-100 million as per World Bank data. Despite constituting such a large part of the population, persons with disabilities have to fight for their basic rights in courts. To implement the 3% disability reservation, where there was 1% each for orthopedically handicapped, visually handicapped and hearing handicapped, disability rights groups and individuals had to take legal recourse time and again. Educational institutions and successive governments both in states and at the Centre violated the mandated disability reservation quota.

The list of cases is huge – successful candidates in various examinations were denied seats in government jobs as well as in educational institutions. A famous case is that of Ira Singhal, the first person with a disability to top the civil services exam. She was denied a posting in 2010 when she cleared the UPSC examination; the authorities cited her inability to push, pull and lift as a reason for denying her the posting. She had to fight her case in the Central Administrative Tribunal, which she ultimately won and joined the Indian Revenue Service in 2014. The point here is that even if a determined candidate fights back and wins, the system makes sure she wastes crucial years and faces unnecessary stress.

Rather than being an enabler for persons with disabilities, the system shows apathy towards them and often looks down upon them. Their disability is seen as their inability to perform tasks assigned. The pre-conceived and misconceived notions about the ability of a disabled person are one of the core reasons behind the lack of intent among the authorities to implement the disability reservation. The situation is graver when it comes to higher government posts, which include Group A and Group B government jobs where the representation of persons with disabilities is abysmally low. Same is the case with the representation of persons with disabilities in higher education, especially in MA, MPhil and PhD courses.

Take, for instance, the example of one of India’s finest universities – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The varsity prides itself for accommodating and giving representation to students from all sections of society, and in relative terms fares better than most other universities. However, when it comes to implementation of the disability reservation, the picture is quite gloomy. As per a Right to Information reply regarding the total number of candidates with disabilities who were recruited as faculty members (assistant professors) in JNU across all departments since 2014, this number is just six, which includes four orthopedically handicapped candidates and two hearing handicapped. No visually impaired person has been recruited as an assistant professor in this time period.

Jawaharlal Nehru University. Source: jnu.ac.in

In the MPhil/PhD admissions too, only 76 candidates (60 male, 16 female) have been selected across all departments in the last four years from the total approximately 5,000 seats. The School of International Studies had selected only 14 candidates (13 male, one female) with disabilities in the last four years, out of an approximate total of 700 seats offered. If one looks more microscopically, last year no candidate with disability was selected in the School of International Studies (SIS), while a year before that only one such candidate was selected out of the total 232 candidates selected for MPhil/PhD. The data reveals one more thing: even among candidates with disabilities, women are more marginalised than men.

The RTI reply also shows that there is no dearth of candidates with disabilities who are applying for MPhil and PhD courses in the last four years. This year, the JNU administration violated disability reservation in faculty recruitment as well as in the selection of students in MPhil/PhD courses. As a result, the Delhi high court had to stay the JNU admission process until the reservation is implemented. The declaration of results of the JNU entrance exam 2018-19 for MPhil/PhD programmes has been delayed, as the matter is still sub judice. Similarly, in the latest advertisement for faculty recruitment by the university in January, not a single post was reserved for persons with disabilities. This matter too went to the Delhi high court after a plea was made by NGO Sambhavna. The whole recruitment process was stalled after that and has not started again yet.

Most of the time, institutions which do not select candidates with disabilities just use the standard excuse of ‘not found suitable’. This practice is rampant across institutions in general. The example of JNU and what happened to Singhal is just the tip of the iceberg. The idea here is not to single out an institution, but rather showcase that even the supposedly best institutions in the country, which fare better on various other parameters, fail miserably when it comes to implementing disability reservations with seriousness.

The Rights to Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016 has increased the quota for disability reservation from 3% to 4% in government jobs and from 3% to 5% in higher educational institutions. However, the situation still remains the same. It is not the quantum of reservation which determines its implementation, but the intent of authorities. Some authorities even offer a rather strange ‘calculation’ as an excuse for not implementing – for example, if a department has just 15 seats in total, the argument given for not offering even a single seat for a person with disability is that how will 4% reservation be calculated for less than 15 seats.

Since the number of jobs for higher positions is smaller, as is the situation in research programmes (MPhil/PhD), similar situations arise and the authorities generally give faulty mathematical explanations in order to deny candidates with disabilities seats. As a result, year after year, a huge backlog of vacancies is created for persons with disabilities. To save face, governments therefore have to do special recruitment drives for candidates with disabilities. This kind of step further marginalises persons with disabilities as they are not allowed to be recruited through common competitive exams.

As per the 100-point recruitment roster under the RPwD Act, the first, 26th, 51st and 76th seats belong to persons with disabilities. Despite having such clear-cut provisions for the implementation of disability reservation, it all comes to the attitude, willingness and intentions of authorities who make life difficult for persons with disabilities. The struggle against this systemic apathy continues.

Martand Jha is a freelance writer based in New Delhi.

The Disabled as Vote Bank: Is it an Oxymoron?

It is high time disability is seen as a mainstream issue in politics. The media too has a responsibility to ensure that people with disabilities are not merely seen as ‘objects of charity’.

The political class looking at a section of the society as a ‘vote bank’ is not necessarily a bad thing. Credit: Reuters

The Economic Survey 2018 is out, the annual Budget has been presented and now all the issues are increasingly getting pointed towards the much-awaited general elections next year. Amidst all this, the opinion polls have started coming in and are being presented in lengthy panel discussions on TV news debates.

Not only do these polls predict who’s going to get how many seats in the elections, these also talk about caste considerations, about inclinations of female voters, about the mood of youngsters, about urban voters, rural voters, voters from different states, voters from different age-groups etc. But never in the history of Indian politics or in the data presented by an opinion poll has one seen the presence of disabled people, their inclinations, their issues, their choices as voters.

Now, there are many terms used for the disabled, some use the term ‘persons with disability’, ‘physically challenged’, ‘physically handicapped’, ‘differently-abled’ and lastly ‘Divyang’. None of these terms does one see or even expect to see in an opinion poll debate, primarily because people with disabilities have never been seen as a ‘vote bank’.

The political class looking at a section of the society as a ‘vote bank’ is not necessarily a bad thing. When the noted Indian sociologist M.N. Srinivas coined this term for the first time in his 1951 paper entitled ‘The Social System of a Mysore Village’, he used it in the context of political influence exerted by a patron over a client. Though over the years, the meaning of vote bank politics has evolved and many political commentators see it in a negative light.

One can often hear people say we are not just a ‘vote bank’ of the political class. But, being a vote bank has a bigger meaning attached to it. This means the political class or political parties know which section of voters to appeal to and, therefore, many government policies have come out in the past to satisfy the demand of various vote banks. If being seen as a vote bank is a problem, then not being seen as one is a much bigger problem.

Persons with disabilities have never been seen as a vote bank by the political class because first, they have been treated as ‘third class citizens’, who are often dependent on someone else for their day-to-day activities.

Second, politicians across the spectrum don’t deem it useful enough to talk about disability issues in mainstream politics, because most of them are either unaware of issues or they simply don’t care about it. This was witnessed by the country when there was little discussion, questions raised, any objections between parliamentarians when the Disability Bill was tabled in both the Houses of parliament for discussion in December 2016.

At best, people with disabilities are seen as ‘objects of charity’.

Third, it is believed that the votes of people with disabilities don’t matter that much because they are relatively few in number and that they as a section of society can’t do much in return for the political class, which the other sections of voters – divided on the basis of caste, class, region, gender or age group – can.

Fourth, the ‘able-bodied’ political class and the society, in general, have never treated the ‘differently abled’ as equal citizens. The next to the non-existent representation of people with disabilities in areas like politics, judiciary, media, higher lever bureaucracy etc shows the level of life they live in general.

This has been the case ever since. Making election booths disabled-friendly is not exactly mainstreaming disability in the discourse of politics. Sadly, people with disabilities as a ‘section’ are not seen as one which can stand and fight against the political class. Also, since every other section has a representative face in politics or even political parties who claim to represent a particular section, who represents the ‘differently abled’ in politics?

Also read: India Has a Long Road Ahead to Combat Challenges Faced by Persons With Disabilities

Has there been any political party which, apart from showing their support to pass new disability legislation, has ever placed the issue of people with disabilities in their mainstream agenda?

Today, as per a World Bank report, there are around than 40-80 million people with disabilities in the country, though the official data as per the 2011 population Census puts the figure at 26.8 million.

These numbers are just too large by any standards and even then political parties haven’t started to see them as potential vote banks. Not only the political class, even the media has done a big disservice to disability as a sector. How many news channels or newspapers have assigned even a single reporter who covers just this huge area?

The reason why the media is being questioned here is that they are the voice of the citizens, of the oppressed and the neglected, and if they are not, they should be. By not talking about disability issues or even while covering disability, putting it under a single column story in some mid-section page of a newspaper, or showing a single clip on disability-related story is doing a great disservice to this section of people, as the media owes the responsibility of giving proper feedback to the political class.

The truth is that the political class is blissfully ignorant about disability issues and people with disabilities. Those who are in a position of power (not necessarily limited to the political class), feel proud of their contribution to any person with a disability even if they have provided a ‘bare-minimum’ facility. Most of the disability-related news is either about an inspirational story of a person with a disability who has achieved something in life, or it is about some NGO or a politician or some philanthropist distributing prosthetics to them.

It is high time that disability is seen as a mainstream issue in politics. In the journey of 70 years as an independent nation, if there is one class which has seen and continues to see neglect and is ignored, it is the disabled class. This being the pre-election year, the least the political class can do is start raising issues related to disability.

India Has a Long Road Ahead to Combat Challenges Faced by Persons With Disabilities

There needs to be a shift from a charity-based approach to a rights-based approach.

World Bank data on the total number of disabled in India suggests the number to be between 40 to 80 million. Credit: Reuters

December 3 is a significant day for millions of persons with disabilities across the globe. It has been marked as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities by the United Nations since 1992. It has been more than 25 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Resolution 47/3, to mark this day.

As per the United Nations, “the aim behind the annual observance of this day is to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development; and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.”

Disability in India

Today, there are millions of people living with one or multiple disabilities. In India, the population with disabilities is around 26.8 million, constituting 2.21% of India’s total population, if one goes by the 2011 population census data. Disability rights activists and academicians working on disability issues, however, say that these numbers in the census are a very small percentage of the actual numbers. World Bank data on the total number of persons with disabilities in India suggests the number is between 40 and 80 million.

Whatever the difference between official figures and figures estimated by global institutions, what is clear is that persons with disabilities constitute a significant part of the Indian population. Their numbers are more than the total population of many countries in the world, and India has one of the highest numbers of people with disabilities globally.

Despite constituting such a significant proportion of the total population, persons with disabilities live a very challenging life. Their ‘disability’ is often seen as their ‘inability’ by many and people in general have preconceived notions about their capabilities. There have been many cases where employers have denied a job to a candidate with a disability, citing the usual ‘not found suitable’.

The main problem lies in the psyche of a significant mass which considers persons with disabilities a liability, and this leads to discrimination and harassment against them and their isolation from the mainstream.

While writing the foreword to the World Report on Disability 2011, professor Stephen Hawking stated:

Disability need not be an obstacle to success. We have a moral duty to remove the barriers to participation, and to invest sufficient funding and expertise to unlock the vast potential of people with disabilities. Governments throughout the world can no longer overlook the hundreds of millions of people with disabilities who are denied access to health, rehabilitation, support, education and employment, and never get the chance to shine.

Ideally, these words should be put into action by governments all over the world, and some progressive countries have taken action to make life easier for their citizens with disabilities. India still lags behind in a big way when it comes to removing infrastructural, institutional and attitudinal barriers for the persons with disabilities. Even now, most buildings in India are not disability-friendly, despite the government of India, under the Accessible India Campaign, instructing all ministries to make their buildings accessible to persons with disabilities.

Also read: When ‘Looking Disabled’ Is an Option, and When It’s Not

It is a welcome step but it will take a lot of time for a culture to be developed in India, where the needs of the population with disabilities are kept in mind while building any infrastructure. Historically, people with disabilities as a community have been targeted and discriminated against across the world. In fact, if one looks carefully, the population with disabilities constitutes the world’s largest ‘unrecognised minority’ group.

Who is a person with disability?

The most important element in the discourse on disability is to assess who is a person with disability. Disability is not a homogeneous concept, as it varies from person to person. Seen through a microscopic lens, one person will always be more or less disabled than the other, in terms of their relative physical capabilities.

The Social Statistics Division under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, government of India, came up with a report titled Disabled Persons in India: A statistical profile 2016. While defining disability, the report states:

From the conceptual point of view, there is no universal definition of what constitutes a disability or of who should be considered as having a disability. Moreover, there is no one static condition of disability. A disability is a result of the interaction between a person with a health condition and a particular environmental context.

This report reveals that as per 2011 population census, 20% of persons with disabilities in India have a disability in movement, 19% have a disability in seeing, 19% have a disability in hearing and 8% have multiple disabilities. The report also highlights that the number of persons with disabilities is highest in the age group 10-19 years (46.2 lakh people).

The United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities defines disability differently. It says:

Disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

The World Report on Disability 2011 sums up the various definitions of disability by stating that “Disability is complex, dynamic, multidimensional, and contested”.

Why is there such a large population of persons with disabilities?

As one looks at the staggering number of people with disabilities in India, the first question that comes to mind is why are the numbers so high? And can they be reduced?

Despite constituting such a significant proportion of the total population, persons with disabilities live a very challenging life. Credit: Reuters

Disability is generally classified into two types. One is when a person is born with a disability while the other is when a person acquires a disability during his/her life. In the first case, the reason is often the lack of good and accessible medical facilities, resulting in various medical complications for both the pregnant mother and the unborn child, often leading to a disability for the child.

Another reason is the lack of care given to pregnant mothers during pregnancy. Data on disability points to a correlation between ‘disability’ and ‘poverty’. A large number of people with disabilities are born in to poor households. This is not just a mere coincidence. This is due to the fact that pregnant mothers have to work until the very late months of their pregnancy under very harsh conditions to make ends meet.

This lack of care due to systemic fallacies leads to medical complications during pregnancy leading to the birth of children with disabilities in many cases. The population census data 2011 also points out similar trends when it says that 69% of the total population of persons with disabilities in India resided in rural areas. This again not a coincidence – it is primarily because of lack of awareness, lack of care provided to pregnant women and lack of good and accessible medical facilities that the number of persons with disabilities in rural areas is more than double the number in urban areas.

So, a large percentage of the population with disabilities can be reduced if two out of three listed causes for child births with disabilities can be eliminated. The first being lack of awareness and care to pregnant mothers and second, the lack of good and accessible medical facilities across the rural heartland. For eliminating both these barriers, the state governments need to invest heavily in their health sector as health comes under the ‘state subject’ in our constitution.

It is the third listed cause that is the real challenge for any government – the fight against poverty. It is poverty that forces a poor pregnant woman to work in the late stages of her pregnancy. Poverty provides a ripe ground for the birth of persons with disabilities – both during and after.

The other type of disability, as discussed above, is acquired disability. This could happen due to various reasons including accidents, disasters, wars, violence and other factors. All these are “controllable” (except natural disasters). Every year thousands of people acquire permanent disability in road accidents; and the individual’s – as well as the nation’s – physical potential gets reduced.

The way ahead

The first thing to be done is to move away from the ‘charity-based approach’ to the ‘rights-based approach’. A significant proportion of people see a person with disabilities as an object of ‘sympathy’ and ‘pity’ thereby leading to their ‘othering’ and their treatment as a third-class citizen in the country.

This is not just a metaphorical statement. When was the last time India had a celebrity with disabilities or a person with disabilities was recognised popularly?

This is because of systemic attitudinal apathy and discrimination against persons with disabilities as many able-bodied people are just not ready to see a person with disabilities as an ‘equal member’ of society.

The identity of such a person is therefore often left to just being a person with disabilities in the eyes of the rest. In recent years though, the discourse of disability has certainly gained momentum. In the public sphere, movies and TV news channels have highlighted issues of disability. Actors have played the roles of people with disabilities in films and news channels have had shows on disability.

Also read: What India Needs to Learn About Disability Rights

But does anyone remember a movie or an advertisement where the lead actor was a person with disabilities or a news channel anchor with disabilities? Again, this is a tough and uncomfortable question to answer. Only when we, as a society, have positive answers to these questions, will the narrative on disability change for good. Merely using the word ‘divyang’ or ‘differently-abled’ won’t change the psyche of the masses towards persons with disabilities.

Rights to Persons With Disabilities Act, 2016

It has been almost a year since the government of India came up with this landmark act on disability which increased the number of disabilities from seven to 21. This act which replaced the earlier Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 has also increased the quota of reservation for persons with disabilities from 3% to 4% in government jobs and 3% to 5% in higher education institutions.

All this looks good on paper. A lot of posts, especially in group A and group B services in the government, continue to lie vacant. And it is the same in higher education institutions. In both cases, the typical answer is given by authorities is that they couldn’t find any ‘suitable candidate’. This answer is a face-saving attempt by the authorities, and could be right in only two instances.

One, if the Indian education system is proving itself incapable of producing candidates with disabilities who possess essential educational qualifications to sit for an exam for a particular post in a government job or higher education. Secondly, if due to systemic discrimination, the employers are just not interested in recruiting a person with disabilities.

Both cases are shameful, if true. Since the inception of Rights to Persons With Disabilities Act, 2016, there have been many instances of faulty implementation of disability reservation. The new act can only be successful if there is a genuine ‘intent’ to recruit persons with disabilities.

To sum up, International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, 2017 should not be just another day where various workshops, talks, seminars and events are organised on the issue of disability. The idea should be to reflect on where we have been going wrong as a society with respect to citizens with disabilities and how these wrongs can be undone.

Indian Mythology Has a Problem With Disability

Our epics teach us to discriminate against disabled people by portraying them negatively and telling us their condition is because of sins committed in past lives.

Sanjaya meets Dhritarashtra as his envoy for peace negotiations. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

It is said that one can find every aspect of life in the Mahabharata and if one doesn’t find what one want’s there, then there is little chance that one will find it elsewhere. But while it is true that the Mahabharata contains elements of philosophy, life, war, intellect, passion, jealousy and treachery, one element is not discussed as it should have been – disability. The character associated with it is Dhritarashtra, who is negatively portrayed throughout the text. In fact, many believe that he is to blame for the epic battle between the cousins (Pandavas and Kauravas) because he adamantly insisted that his son, Duryodhana, should be king after him, instead of the more worthy Yudhisthira.

Since very few people in India have actually read the Mahabharata, the don’t know about the character of Dhritarashtra before he became king – an aspect that has been cautiously kept hidden. Both Dhritarashtra and his step-brother Pandu had a very cordial relationship. Pandu, being the younger brother, held Dhritarashtra in very high-esteem – and the feeling was reciprocated.

Both were disciples of the great Bhishma, their uncle who was also looking after the administration of the kingdom since there was no king on the throne at the time. Bhishma himself couldn’t take the throne because of a vow he had made earlier in his life. Since Dhritarashtra was older, he was trained to be a king, while the younger brother, Pandu, was trained as a warrior and lead the army and became the senapati. Bhishma trained the brothers so the kingdom could go into safe hands.

Bhishma’s idea was sage, because Dhritarashtra was visually impaired from birth and thus couldn’t fight wars. He was trained in administration, management, decision-making, delivering justice – all very important aspects of being a king, while the aspect of war was left to Pandu, who could militarily assist his older brother. As a team, they could have achieved wonders.

But when Dhritarashtra was being crowned, Vidur, the young prime minister, who was also taught by Bhishma, objected to him becoming king. How can a blind man sit on the throne of a king, he had argued. How could the kingdom be a great empire if the king is blind? How could important decisions be made on the battlefield if the king is sitting safe in the capital?

Nobody said anything to Vidur’s questions because a king with a disability was unprecedented. As a result, Dhritarashtra had to step down; his disability was taken as his inability. Denied his rightful place, this became a turning point for Dhritarashtra and guided the person he was to become.

After a short period of time though, Dhritarashtra was made the king because Pandu left his throne and eventually died. It was only out of compulsion that Dhritarashtra was accepted as king. Had he been made king the first time around, he wouldn’t have been made as conscious about his ‘disability’. Now, he was a ‘sloppy second’, someone’s ‘reject’ and he knew this very clearly. Now the question is, when Dhritarashtra sat on the throne, was the Kaurava empire anything short of a mighty empire? Was the administration poor, were people unhappy, was justice not delivered? The answer is no, because Dhritarashtra had people like Bhishma around him, along with Vidur, who took care of the intricacies of administration.

All the wrongs began to emerge later, when his son Duryodhana was born. Dhirtarastra wanted him to be king after him, even though Duryodhana was unworthy, simply because he wanted to ‘undo’ the injustice done to him. He wanted to ensure that his son wouldn’t be a ‘sloppy second’ like him and that’s why his son was raised believing the throne was his birthright.

Nobody is born bad but it’s society which ‘makes’ or ‘breaks’ an individual. Our society just saw the bad person Dhritarashtra became, but turned a blind eye to what led him there. Since he was disabled, people who have historically discriminated against differently-abled people were further encouraged to justify their attitude towards differently-abled people.

One may wonder what mythology has to do in this context. Indian society is deeply affected by our mythology and its characters. The illiterate know about these stories. The impact of our mythology is such that people identify with the characters and inculcate values drawn from them into their own lives. The depiction and characterisation of disabled people in Indian mythology is extremely negative and people have used the stories to justify their discriminatory attitude against differently-abled people.

The case of Dhritarashtra is not just about a disabled person who has been depicted in poor light. If one looks at the Ramayana, the character of Manthara has also been demonised to a great extent. In fact, she has largely been blamed for sending Rama into exile for 14 years. Manthara was the maid of the queen, Kaikeyi, and is seen as instrumental in convincing the queen to ask Dasharatha to grant her the two boons that he had promised her a long time ago. Under Manthara’s influence, Kaikeyi asked the king to make his son Bharat the next king of Ayodhaya instead of Rama. However, some folktales point out how Manthara didn’t have anything to gain by sending Ram to exile. Instead, she suffered heavy public scrutiny that linked her character to her orthopaedic disability, because of which she couldn’t stand erect.

Mostly, our mythological texts have shown disabled people either as powerful, cunning and mischievous characters or as beggars in a state of extreme pain and poverty. Also, disability and mocking disability is justified in the name of sins carried from their previous births. Rarely does one come across portrayals of disabled characters in a positive light. One such character was Ashtavakra, who was physically disabled since birth. Born in a Brahmin family, he mastered the Vedas and other holy scriptures at an early age. He was mocked by the intellectuals in King Janaka’s court on account of his disability, where he had gone to participate in a shastrartha (philosophical debate).

Ultimately, he defeated his mockers and earned a lot of praise from everyone. But this story from the Chandogya Upanishad sets a dangerous precedent, if observed carefully. The subtext is that if you are intellectually capable, your physical disability doesn’t matter. The moral seems to be that a disabled person has to be extraordinary to earn basic respect, a phenomenon that continues today.

The time has come to ask tough questions, to point out the wrong messages which have been disseminated by these texts and to re-interpret these texts in the light of the present day so that differently-abled people are not judged by the wrong morals of our mythological texts that relegate disability and disabled people to the margins.