Tag: disability law

Law Schools in India Must Pay More Attention to Disability Legislation

Along with a delay in implementing provisions of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, there exists an eerie absence of focused discussions on disability-rights legislation in law schools’ curricula.

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%.

MBBS Curriculum Updated After 22 Years, but Barely Mentions Disability

The Medical Council of India and the Union health ministry have both been asked to re-examine the curriculum and include a component on disability rights.

New Delhi: After 22 years, medical students in India have an updated curriculum that is due to roll out in August 2019.

India produces around 90,000 doctors every year, with 63,250 undergraduate medical seats, and 34,950 post graduate medical seats.

But the new curriculum skates over the issue of disability and disability rights.

This comes in spite of the 2016 legislation on the Rights of Persons with Disability Act, which says that curriculum in universities, colleges and schools should include information on the rights of people with disabilities.

MCI told to redraft the curriculum

According to two documents with The Wire, the Medical Council of India (MCI) and the Union health ministry have both been asked to re-examine the curriculum and include a component on disability rights.

In March, the Delhi commissioner for persons with disability has written to the health ministry about the issue.

In the letter, the commissioner says that there needs to be a “shift from the medical approach to the rights based approach to disability.” He points out other deficiencies – the new curriculum does not make MBBS students aware of key provisions of this 2016 law for disabled people’s rights, neither does it give students the “human rights perspective” to disability.

A second letter on the same issue was sent to the MCI from the national chief commissioner for persons with disabilities. Here too, the commissioner asked the MCI to look into the points raised by Satendra Singh, a doctor with locomotor disability, and take all stakeholders into consultation on it.

Also Read: Ministry to Safeguard Rights of Disabled Defends Order Discriminating Against Them

The multi-volume new curriculum has been written by doctors at leading institutions such as KEM Hospital (Mumbai), Government Medical College (Kottayam), Christian Medical College (Ludhiana) and AIIMS (Delhi).

How is the new curriculum silent on disability?

These letters about changing the curriculum have come about due to the work of Dr Satendra Singh, a doctor with locomotor disability at GTB Hospital, Delhi. He wrote to the state and national commissioners for disability, alerting them to the issue.

“We often complain that doctors don’t understand patients with disabilities. I have seen people with disabilities often go to a doctor with an ailment but doctors focus only on their disability instead,” said Dr Singh.

This is not a holistic approach, he says. “Disability is so vast and people with disabilities have very different needs. Treatment options are already there, but we now need a human rights approach.”

In his letter, he alerted authorities that “disability competencies are not adequately represented” in this new curriculum.

Also Read: Health Ministry Delay on NEET Criteria Leaves Disabled Students in a Lurch

In fact, in the 94 page booklet on ethics, disability is mentioned only once.

The word ‘dignity’ is not used at all, in this new curriculum, even though that is one of the core tenets of the Rights of People with Disability Act.

The curriculum itself still refers to the repealed legislation for mental health from 1987, whereas India has a new Act as of 2017. It also uses outdated language such as ‘differently abled.’

What does Indian law say on education about disability?

The Rights of People with Disabilities Act, 2016 has two sections relevant to this issue.

Section 39 says that the government should ensure that “the rights of persons with disabilities are included in the curriculum in Universities, colleges and schools” and that there should be “orientation and sensitisation at the school, college, University and professional training level on the human condition of disability and the rights of persons with disabilities.”

Section 47 says that there should be a component about disability for doctors and nurses, and in fact for all schools, colleges and University teachers as well as for para-medical personnel, social welfare officers, rural development officers, asha workers, anganwadi workers, engineers, architects, other professionals and community workers.

A Film on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome That Tells a Story We Don’t Normally Hear

Beyond the candy fluff of ‘Women’s Day’, Unrest raises the bar for feminists, disability rights activists and their allies.

Beyond the candy fluff of ‘Women’s Day’, Unrest raises the bar for feminists, disability rights activists and their allies.

A scene from the documentary film 'Unrest' (2017). Source: YouTube

A scene from the documentary film ‘Unrest’ (2017). Source: YouTube

Early on in the documentary film Unrest (2017), Jennifer Brea, the filmmaker and protagonist, preempts a question to the camera, recording her struggling to manoeuvre herself on her bed.

“I know you might be saying to yourself, if I really couldn’t stand up, why would I be filming it? Well… I kind of think someone should see this.” Unrest is a revelation of gaze and filmmaking at the intersection of disability and gender, more particularly gender roles. The film is the experience of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), more commonly referred to as “chronic fatigue syndrome”, narrated by someone experiencing the condition. That narration is stark and pulls no punches. There are parts of the film that follow Brea and her husband, through their various attempts to understand, cure and manage her condition over the years, that are overwhelming by virtue of how deeply personal they are.

After a good streak of health, capped by a triumphant afternoon celebration with the alumni and faculty members at Princeton University, she is curled up in a foetal position. Brea has relapsed. She is sobbing and wailing, still in her orange Princeton t-shirt, with her husband crouching next to her looking despondent. As a viewer celebrating her success, the transition evokes a visceral reaction from the viewer. The helplessness the couple shares is real, honest and contagious.

Turning the camera on gender roles

Most documentaries regarding disability focus on the medical condition itself or on the individual – but retain the commonality of being seen from the lens of the able-bodied. Persons with disabilities are excluded from many opportunities. The ability to tell their own stories is one of them. Accounts of the lives of persons with disabilities are rightly dismissed by persons with disabilities themselves as “inspiration porn” and for being Oscar bait. But by turning the camera on herself, and on others who have this condition, Brea owns the narrative and manages to elicit empathy instead of sympathy.

Doing this with ME is no easy task. The film was funded via Kickstarter, “shot” over four years using iPhones and Skype. Its most poignant and uncomfortable moments are those shot in the style of cinéma vérité. It appears that Brea began recording herself to counter the gaslighting of her experiences by medical professionals, a theme that other respondents in the film also speak of.

Gender is as much a theme of the film as disability is. The viewer is introduced to Omar, Brea’s spouse, through smiling wedding videos and “how we first met” anecdotes. Omar’s identity to the viewer is entirely one of a caregiver and devoted husband until we are introduced to Omar Wasow, once considered one of the most influential people in cyberspace. We are left to ponder the costs to Wasow, and perhaps to cyberspace in general, on account of the exclusion he and Brea faced because of her condition.

Brea spent years without a diagnosis and attempted several methods of controlling the condition, including living in a tent house. What the film does dwell on is Brea’s guilt as a spouse at “robbing” Wasow of his entitlements.

Gender roles as constructed are inherently ableist, assuming women to be caregivers in their role as wives. The camera stalks friends of the couple, talking about the joys of having children, while Wasow nods. Later, on Twitter, Brea spoke of an incident where a doctor took Wasow into another room and told him that it was “okay to leave her”. This comes as no surprise. Failure to perform gender roles can be considered to be grounds for divorce on the condition of “mental cruelty”.

Similarly, if a person has been suffering, intermittently or continuously, from a mental disorder “of such a kind and to such an extent that their spouse cannot reasonably be expected to live with them”, it can be considered to be a ground for divorce under Hindu marriage law.

Reclaiming the narrative

A brief history of ME is pieced together by Brea, who points to similarities in the diagnostic criteria for hysteria and conversion disorder, both mental illnesses themselves. Lee-Ray Denton, featured in Unrest, was ‘left’ by a husband who thought she was being lazy. It was only when their daughter was also diagnosed with ME, many years later, that he realised that this wasn’t “just in her head”. In Denmark, symptoms of ME are misdiagnosed as a mental illness and persons are institutionalised under mental health laws. This particular account in the film was problematic, as it implied that the forced institutionalisation of a young girl was an issue because she had ME and not a mental illness.

The present rights paradigm respects the rights of all persons with disabilities to live in the community with the support that they require to live independently.

Unrest is a film about people – primarily women – disabled by their condition. The campaigns that the film captured (like #millionmissing) and the campaigns that it has spurred both focus on whether the medical establishment has been aware of the condition, and the lack of funding to study ME and other conditions that disproportionately affect women. The prevalent discourse on disability worldwide is centred around the ‘social model’. It says that persons who have impairments (e.g., being unable to see, hear, or move as others without impairments do) are impaired by barriers in society that keep them from enjoying their life on an equal basis with others. This is opposed to the medical model, which focuses solely on the condition. Unrest reaffirms some of the skepticism disability rights activists have had with the social model, and shows that the health domain is still important for several constituencies among persons with disabilities, and that we can’t leave them behind.

One hopes that the discussion around Unrest will also include other barriers inhibiting the participation of persons with ME and not just treatment of the condition (as important as the latter may be). With no cure on the horizon, the stigma attached to the condition has prevented those who live with it from the receiving the kind of support they need.

Accommodating people with ME in schools, colleges and the workplace requires us to include what accessibility and reasonable accommodation means to someone with chronic fatigue. A beautiful part of the film shows Jessica, a teenager with ME, floating in an accessible swimming pool with the help of a trainer aware of her needs.

Advocacy must also discuss what additional support persons with ME require when they are in critical phases, unable to do much else, as well as ensure that their caregivers aren’t excluded from realising their own potential. India’s new disability law excludes ME and several other rare diseases and conditions as disabilities for the purpose of entitlements under the law, which means that the battle for rights is a little steeper here.

Beyond the candy fluff of ‘Women’s Day’, Unrest raises the bar for intersectional approaches for feminists, disability rights activists and allies. Even if you abhor the idea of a film that forces you into activism, it is – along with everything else – the reclamation of a narrative by a woman, with a heartwarming love story to boot.

Unrest is available to stream on Netflix India.

Amba Salelkar is a lawyer with the Equals Centre for Promotion of Social Justice. The organisation focuses on policy and budget advocacy towards furthering the rights of persons with disabilities.

Javed Abidi’s Brand of Activism Will Continue to Power Generations of Disability Rights Champions

His methods were unorthodox and discussions in any corner of the world on disability rights in India would always lead to Javed Abidi.

His methods were unorthodox and discussions in any corner of the world on disability rights in India would always lead to Javed Abidi.

Javed Abidi. Credit: Facebook/Javed Abidi

It’s no exaggeration to say that 53-year-old Javed Abidi, who passed away on the March 4, was the face of the disability movement in India for the last couple of decades. As the story goes, he was named ‘Javed’ – immortal – in order to stave off the declaration of the doctor who predicted that he had only days to live, at birth. He was, in that sense, a man vaguely aware of the fact that he was on borrowed time – he seemed to be omnipresent at times, with prompt replies to emails that he thought important regardless of the time zone he was in. He was constantly on the move, contesting elections, leading one of India’s most prominent disability rights organisations as well as one of the largest disabled people’s organisations in the world, Disabled People’s International. Indeed, even the world was not enough for Javed Abidi.

Abidi’s entry into the world of disability rights came not from his identity as a person with disability as much as it did from a happy coincidence of philanthropy and privilege. He had earned a degree in journalism from Wright State University, Ohio, but his qualifications were being overlooked by potential publishers because they weren’t convinced that he could ‘work’ with his impairment, spinal bifida, for which he used a wheelchair. This was reflective of the disability rights approaches of the time, which were all about charity. Perhaps it was with this approach in mind that Sonia Gandhi, who was setting up the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in the name of her late husband, contacted Abidi to help set up the disability wing of the organisation.

Abidi, influenced by the evolving social model of disability from his campus experiences, took the opportunity and made it his own. This engagement led to the formation of two important organisations – the National Council for the Promotion of Employment of People with Disability and the Disability Rights Group (DRG), which later took on several avatars. The former worked with the private sector to help overcome the barriers that existed preventing the gainful employment of persons with disabilities. The latter was the closest one could imagine to a political lobby group on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Also read

What set the DRG apart from other groups working on disability rights was the fact that it sought to be cross-disability, an innovation that was recognised when awarding Abidi an Ashoka fellowship in 1998. The DRG, through Abidi, used the privilege of political proximity, education, awareness and exposure to launch a variety of actions towards realising the rights of persons with disabilities. The organisation takes credit for the passage of the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, where protests by the organisation convinced all parties to set aside their high drama in parliament to pass the law.

They also led a public interest litigation on a variety of issues, with the support of the Human Rights Law Network and the Public Justice Foundation’s Disability Rights Initiative. Though the 1995 Act had its limitations, this ‘strategic litigation’ precipitated changes to accessibility in higher education, accessible voting in elections, and accessible air travel. A long-pending litigation on accessibility in public infrastructure was finally reserved for judgment in December 2017, and it promises to be part of Abidi’s legacy to the sector.

Abidi and the DRG also claim credit for the Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment setting up a committee to draft a new disability rights legislation in light of India’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The committee was headed by Sudha Kaul, a non-disabled person, and lacked representation from many impairment groups. Abidi launched a protest, bringing disabled activists from all over the country. While the chairperson remained, representatives of groups like psycho-social disability and developmental disability joined the committee. However, many of them resigned within a few months of the work commencing, citing failure to prioritise their concerns in the discussions, particularly those pertaining to the legal capacity of persons with disabilities. Meanwhile, Abidi had been elected as chair of the Disabled People’s International in 2011, which engaged much of his time and energy. Yet, he retained a key eye on the happenings in India.

Subsequent versions of the Bill further diluted these provisions, and the law that came to be introduced in parliament in January 2014 was seen as meaningless for impairment groups that faced numerous barriers on account of being perceived to “lack capacity”. In fact, it was another Abidi-led effort, the compilation of the Parallel Report of India on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, that led to the first collation of all laws relating to incapacity of persons with disabilities.

Leaders from these marginalised impairment groups were outraged by the omissions in the draft and sought its referral to the parliamentary standing committee. These activists were at loggerheads with the DRG and other allied organisations, who pushed for passage of the Bill without further delay. The ‘battle’ got personal, since many of the dissenters were proteges of Abidi, and have left the sector acrimonious till this day. It is a tribute to Abidi’s leadership capability that attempts to establish a ‘cross disability’ front to counter his own remained feeble and fell apart as soon as the referral to the standing committee was made.

Abidi’s career as an international disability rights activist and leader was not without controversy. However, he established himself as a champion for the Global South in a disability rights movement largely dominated by white, and often able-bodied voices. There are numerous anecdotes of how Abidi regularly “shut down” representatives of International Human Rights Organisations talking about disability rights by pointing out that they had no person with disabilities in their organisations. He was known as a ‘game-changer’, and his methods were unorthodox. Wherever one worked, whatever corner of the world, discussions on disability rights in India would always led to Javed Abidi.

Abidi’s legacy includes bringing a sense of entitlement and professionalism to the struggle for disability rights. He caused a generation of activists to be exposed to tools like litigation, policy advocacy, budget analysis. He supported the formation of regional organisations to support the most marginalised like the Disability Legislation Units, and also supported organisations like BarrierBreak in hosting Techshare, which showcases cutting edge technology for persons with disabilities.

Organisations working on disability now comprise more persons with disabilities. Abidi held a fragile cross-disability movement together. He led a cross -disability dharna against the proposed Mental Health Bill even when certain impairment groups did not want “those people” with psycho-social disabilities to be included under the same legislation. And he was not one to rest on his successes. In the next few weeks, the NCPEDP is organising training in several states on the 2016 disability law. Translations of the laws into local languages is also underway. My last conversation with Abidi, albeit towards the end of November 2015, was brainstorming on a panel for an event to commemorate 20 years of the 1995 Disability Law: The Equality +20 conference for which he had invited me as a panelist. I was, admittedly, sulking at the foregone conclusion that this law was going to be passed as it was.

“Do you think it will end there? Of course, the law isn’t perfect. I want you to talk about what will be next. Whatever it is. Whatever we need to do.” I wasn’t going to miss it come hell or high water, or so I imagined – unfortunately, the 2015 floods in Tamil Nadu prevented this exchange in public.

The disability sector has its share of experts, and activists. Whether there will be another leader like Abidi to represent the views of the sector at the national level remains to be seen, especially at this juncture when different (and newer) groups are fighting over limited resources. Regional movements for advocacy on the rights of persons with disabilities are gaining foot, as are intersectional perspectives, such as women with disability, who have found themselves excluded from the approaches of a mostly male-dominated sector. Abidi’s demise may be coinciding with the end of an era, but decades of his brand of activism will continue to influence the methods of newer generations, one way or the other.

Amba Salelkar is a lawyer with the Equals Centre for Promotion of Social Justice. The organisation focuses on policy and budget advocacy towards furthering the rights of persons with disabilities.

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’.

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 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.

US Judge Allows First Transgender Person to Sue Under Disability Law

The judge also said the law should be broadly construed to give people with disabilities recourse to pursue discrimination claims.

A rainbow US flag is held up during a vigil for the Pulse night club victims in Orlando, Florida, US on June 19, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Files

A US judge ruled on Thursday (May 18) that a transgender woman could move forward with a sex discrimination lawsuit against her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act, even though it explicitly excludes transgender people from protection.

The plaintiff, Kate Lynn Blatt, becomes the first transgender person to be allowed to sue under the ADA for gender dysphoria, according to her Philadelphia-based lawyer, Neelima Vanguri.

But US District Judge Joseph Leeson avoided ruling on the constitutionality of the ADA, as the plaintiffs had sought, under the legal principle that courts should avoid decisions on constitutional grounds if possible.

Being transgender is not considered a disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, but it can give rise to gender dysphoria, a type of anxiety that may require medical treatment. Gender dysphoria forms Blatt’s basis for making a claim under the ADA.

Leeson, from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, found that simply being transgender would be insufficient to bring a case, but that gender dysphoria was a medical condition worthy of protection against discrimination.

He also said the law should be broadly construed to give people with disabilities recourse to pursue discrimination claims.

Blatt is suing her former employer, the retail chain Cabela’s Inc, for sex discrimination, saying she was fired after harassment that included denying her use of the women’s bathroom and temporarily forcing her to wear a name tag with her male name given at birth.

Blatt, 36, worked at the Cabela’s store in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, in 2006 and 2007. She was fired, she said, when Cabela’s alleged she threatened a co-worker’s child during an altercation at work, an accusation Blatt denies.

Cabela’s representatives did not respond to after-hours requests for comment. The company previously declined to comment because the litigation was pending.

The ADA was passed in 1990 as a landmark law protecting people with disabilities. But the lawsuit, filed in 2014, challenges a little-known clause in the act that “disability” shall not include “transsexualism.”

The lawsuit, which also cites protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against sex discrimination in employment, had asked the judge to rule that the ADA clause violates the US Constitution because it denies equal protection under the law.

Vanguri said Leeson’s ruling will help others who want to bring claims under the ADA.

“I’m hopeful we will be able to expand civil rights for transgender people just a little,” she said.

(Reuters)