Sri City: Earlier last year, Satendra Singh, a professor of physiology at the University College of Medical Sciences and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Delhi, and a noted disability-rights activist, was invited to speak at the National Law Institute University (NLIU) Bhopal, one of India’s premier law schools. Amidst its beautiful campus, what stuck out as a sore thumb was the lack of disability-friendly infrastructure.
Singh is a person with mobility impairment and uses an assistive device. According to him, the entrances to the lecture halls had steps that a person with locomotor disability couldn’t climb. Even the stage from which Singh was expected to deliver his talk required climbing stairs, coercing him to use his crutches.
“How long will we visit universities to give talks and make fun of ourselves being forced to climb stairs?” he asks.
The tipping point, however, was when Singh asked his audience – young students training to be some of the country’s foremost lawyers – the number of disability-rights legislations in the country. “They had no clue; some said one, some said two. They had absolutely no idea. This was a shocker for me,” Singh told The Wire. “I had experienced the same ignorance at Campus Law School, University of Delhi, earlier,” he added.
Disappointed with the lack of both disability-friendly infrastructure and the audience’s knowledge of disability-rights legislation, in April 2022 Singh filed applications under the Right to Information Act (RTI Act), 2005, to five reputed law schools in the country: NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad (henceforth, NALSAR); NLIU, Bhopal; National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru; National Law University (NLU), Delhi; and the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata.
Replies to his RTI applications, copies of which The Wire has seen, revealed that along with a delay in implementing provisions of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (RPDA Act), there exists an eerie absence of focused discussions on disability-rights legislation in the institutions’ curricula.
“Disability-rights legislations will remain great pieces of paper until we sensitise and train forthcoming lawyers to implement them,” Singh told The Wire.
Slow implementation of provisions of the RPDA 2016
On a positive note, responses to Singh’s applications revealed that all the five law schools have students with disabilities. At the WBNUJS, for example, there are 30 students with disabilities. The numbers for NALSAR, NLIU, NLSIU and NLU were 35, 22, 26 and 20 respectively.
On the other hand, numbers for faculty with disabilities were significantly lesser. At the WBNUJS, there were only 2 faculty with disabilities who were teaching in the institution when they responded to Singh’s application. At NLU, there was one.
NLSIU, at that time, did not have any member of the faculty with disability, but had made an appointment. NLIU and NALSAR did not have any faculty members with disabilities at the time.
According to the RPDA 2016, which came into effect in June 2017, higher-education institutions are expected to reserve a minimum of 5% seats for prospective students with benchmark disabilities, and all government establishments are to reserve 4% seats in the workforce for people with disabilities (including 1% for people with physical disabilities and 1% for people with mental/cognitive/learning disabilities).
Also read: Poorly Worded Ads, Apathy Are Depriving Doctors With Disabilities of Job Opportunities
Further, the RPDA 2016 also mandates institutions to notify an “equal opportunity policy” that provides a detailed account of the steps taken by the institution to make themselves more accessible to people with disabilities.
However, around half a decade after the mandate, replies received by Singh revealed that none of the five institutions to which he filed his applications had a functional equal opportunity policy.
For instance, NALSAR mentioned that while it “strictly follows” the reservation criteria for people with disabilities in admissions to its programme, an equal opportunity policy is yet to be notified.
“The university is currently working on a comprehensive policy of equal opportunity which would include Persons with Disabilities, LGBTQ (sic.) and other marginalised sections of the population which need special treatment,” they wrote in their reply.
Notably, the WBNUJS had mentioned at the time of their response to Singh’s application that an equal opportunity policy has been drafted at the institute and is awaiting a nod from their academic council. According to a copy of the policy on the university’s website, the policy was adopted by the council in May 2022.
At NLSIU, an Equal Opportunity Cell has been set up “to monitor…adherence to these standards [“zero-tolerance policy towards discrimination”], particularly relating to marginalisation and exclusion of minority groups as well as persons with disabilities,” the institution told The Wire through formal channels. The equal opportunity cell is also expected to work proactively on anti-discrimination policies, grievance redressal procedures and sensitisation programmed, they added.
Disability law and the curriculum
Importantly, the RPDA 2016 also mandates training “on disability rights in all courses for…Panchayati Raj Members, legislators, administrators, police officials, judges and lawyers” (emphasis added).
Further, the Act also makes compulsory the induction of disability “as a component for all education courses for schools, colleges and University teachers, doctors, nurses, para-medical personnel, social welfare officers, rural development officers, asha workers, anganwadi workers, engineers, architects, other professionals and community workers”.
Despite these mandates, however, responses to Singh’s RTI applications revealed that none of the five institutions had a compulsory course focused on disability-rights legislation (often termed as “disability law”).
Some of the institutions, however, mentioned having elective and seminar courses. For instance, NALSAR mentioned offering a three-credit social science seminar course on “Madness, Disability and the Normal”. Whether the seminar course was a compulsory course or not is not clear from the response. Both NLIU and WBNUJS mentioned not offering any mandatory courses that discuss the RPDA, and NLU did not respond to this question in their reply to Singh’s RTI application.
NLSIU mentioned that while there is no compulsory course focusing on disability law alone, the same is discussed as a part of other compulsory courses – family law, criminal law and human rights law.
“At least one elective course related to disability law has been taught in every academic year in recent years. Additionally, some of the core mandatory courses of the curriculum, including courses on Human Rights Law, Labour Law and Law, Poverty and Development discuss several themes connected to the rights of persons with disabilities,” NLSIU told The Wire over email.
Emails to the vice-chancellors of NALSAR, NLIU, WBNUJS and NLU did not receive a response at the time of writing this report. This report will be updated if and when responses are received.
A case for mainstreaming disability law in the curriculum
Sanjay Jain, professor of law at NLSIU and a person with visual disability, pointed out to The Wire that “the standard legal curriculum is almost non-cognisant about disability legislation”, despite “glimpses of the same…in syllabi of human rights.”
According to Jain, who is also an appointed member of the Supreme Court Committee on Accessibility, the current law curriculum does not make any serious effort to expose the “ableist nature of the Indian Constitution”. For instance, he pointed out that the Constitution continues to perceive disability as a medical condition instead of the social model of disability.
The social model of disability shifts how one’s disability is seen in society. While the medical model locates disability in the body of an individual and seeks to ‘correct’ the disability, the social model locates an individual’s disability in “systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes, and social exclusion (intentional or inadvertent)”. Thus, the social model argues that people with disabilities are unable to function to their complete potential not because they are bodily unable to, but because the society is constructed around ableist norms and values.
Also read: Training, Employment of Persons With Disabilities Drops Under Central Schemes in 2nd Modi Regime
For example, consider the case of a person who is unable to use stairs. While the medical model would focus on improving the ability of the individual to climb stairs, the social model would aim to make alternatives of stairs – e.g. ramps – available to the individual. Thus, while this wouldn’t change the person’s ability to climb stairs, their inability to climb stairs would no longer be disabling.
As an example of the Indian legal system’s adherence to the medical model, Jain spoke of the Judges Enquiry Act 1968. According to him, the Act “regards the allegation of acquisition of physical and mental disability by judges as a marker of inefficiency”.
The accused judge can be coerced into medical examination and, if the charge against them is proven, be impeached.
Jain believes that having a compulsory focused exposure to disability legislation is crucial for making the “legal process more compassionate”. Talking about the need for society to “problematise the ‘standard body’ as the norm” and to recognise disability as a part of “diverse humanity”, he told The Wire that “‘Disability Studies’ must be offered as a part of the compulsory curriculum.”
Why disability law continues to languish in the shadows
In 2020, Anna Lawson, professor of law at the University of Leeds, England, wrote that while disability has been making way into human rights law texts, “Categorizing Disability Law as a mere sub-discipline of Human Rights Law would risk its continued invisibility to students and law makers alike.”
Further, Lawson added, “it would wrongly suggest that Disability Law has little or no place in countries in which law on human rights is poorly developed or where human rights arguments are politically problematic.”
Concerned as Lawson and Jain are, there is no denying the fact that disability law – and disability studies in general – continue to be taught as parts of other subjects. “There is a discussion around disability informally in terms of the capabilities approach in the context of labour law and in sociology courses,” V. Ashish, a fourth-year law student with disability at NLSIU Bengaluru, told The Wire.
“The primary concern still remains that in terms of statutory discussions around the RPDA, there is no particular curriculum that directly deals with it within the core courses that are offered to the students in the B.A.(LLB) programme,” he added.
If the case for the independent mainstreaming of disability law is clear, then why does it continue to exist in the shadows?
Ashish points out three broad reasons. One, he says, is that the curriculum in law schools is dominated by courses prescribed by the Bar Council of India, a statutory body regulating law practice and education in the country. The curriculum is already quite hectic, Ashish adds, saying that “offering something outside of the prescribed courses becomes difficult”.
Second, he says there is a lack of professors with enough expertise and experience with teaching disability legislation and disability studies.
Third, Ashish argues that given how recent the current disability legislation in the country – the RPDA 2016 – is, there is a possibility that most law educators do not see enough “legal material” that can be taught as a standalone course in a law curriculum. “While we wait for disability legislation to be mainstreamed, the way for now might be to integrate it within the current curriculum,” he says.
According to Ashish, integrating disability law with the existing curriculum will also offer students an understanding of how disability law intersects with other aspects of law in the country, e.g. family law and labour law.
Rays of hope?
While Singh, Jain and Ashish – and the larger community of people with disabilities in the law ecosystem – wait for disability law to be given due recognition in the law curriculum, efforts, formal and informal, are underway to open spaces for conversation around disability in law schools.
For example, Jain is also the convenor of the Equal Opportunity Cell at NLSIU, which creates a pathway for “taking up disability-rights initiatives”, he told The Wire.
NLSIU Bengaluru also informed The Wire through its official channel of its initiative to digitise 40,000 printed books in its library. The initiative, which commenced in 2022, has already successfully digitised 15,000 books, which can be accessed by registered users of the library with accessibility needs using existing aids.
Further, according to the communication received from NLSIU, the library has also purchased screen readers and speech-to-text converters, which are available for use to all users of the library. These tools were purchased after consultation with students and faculty with disabilities.
Ashish also told The Wire that having a vocal and active student body at his campus has helped further conversations with the administration around disability, gender and caste. Further, “students can undertake disability studies as part of their projects, which the professors are more than willing to discuss”, he added.
For Singh, who calls himself an “accidental activist”, having lawyers trained in disability legislation is of paramount importance. “I had no clue about my rights even after my MBBS and MD. I read the United Nations Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities by myself and started filing cases on my own with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities,” he told The Wire.
But for people not trained in law, the battle is an upward climb.
“That is why we need support from lawyers trained in disability legislation,” he added.
Sayantan Datta (they/them) are a queer-trans science writer, communicator and journalist. They currently work with the feminist multimedia science collective TheLifeofScience.com, and tweet at @queersprings.
Note: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that the RPDA mandates 2% reservation for persons with disabilities in jobs in government institutions. This has been corrected to 4%.