Why the attack on disability reservations is misguided and ableist

Following allegations that a few individuals availed of the disability quota in the civil services examination using fake certificates, several influential voices have demanded amending or restricting disability reservations.

For a long time, the community of persons with disabilities has been aware of fraudulent practices through which fake certificates are obtained. The community has pointed to the need for a scientific yet simple way to assess disability.

Undergirding the calls to revisit reservations is an ableist mindset and an understanding that persons with disabilities are beneficiaries of the state’s charity. Disability, in this view, is solely a medical fact and the benefit of reservations should find its boundary strictly within the medically-defined possibilities.

It ignores the fact that both technology and reasonable accommodation could enable persons with disabilities to perform demanding tasks and occupy positions that they could not have done otherwise. For example, an accessible e-filing system in a government office will enable a visually-disabled person using screen reader technology to be an efficient bureaucrat.

These critics also believe that since reservations are a benefit, the state has the right to renege on its promise unilaterally.

Over the decades, the disability rights movement in India has mounted a serious challenge to this view. It has framed disability reservations as a political right earned by citizens with disabilities.

Rather than reconsider disability reservations, India, as democratic society, should instead expand the scope of these provisions to empower more people with disabilities, not undo the progress made so far.

A successful movement

The disability rights movement originated in India with the self-advocacy movement of the blind in the 1970s. By the 1980s, the focus shifted from demands for recruiting the blind in lower category central government jobs to pushing for a disability law to be enacted.

Simultaneously, there was considerable international pressure for such a law during The Decade of Disabled Persons (1983-’92). Another fillip to the movement came from intense lobbying from organisations such as India’s Disabled Rights Group.

A combination of domestic lobbying and international pressure resulted in the enactment of a comprehensive disability law in 1995.

It marked a crucial victory but persons with disability had to mount an intense struggle to get the law fully implemented. This involved constant negotiations with the government, legal interventions and a slew of other strategies.

India’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disability in 2007 coupled with the demand for a strong disability law resulted in the enactment of the Rights of Persons with Disability Act in 2016. Among other things, it increased the number of disabilities from seven to 21 and widened the percentage of reservations in education and employment.

Since its origins, the disability rights movement in India has articulated the need for an inclusive society for persons with disabilities. Though gradual, these efforts resulted in positive outcomes in the lives of persons with disabilities.

Incremental institutional measures to create an accessible and inclusive society are prime examples of the success of the disability rights movement in India. These measures included government policies and targeted schemes, as well as a legal regime that largely upheld the rights of persons with disabilities.

The 2016 act increased reservations in education to 5% and in employment to 4% from 3% stipulated by the 1995 act. To persons with disabilities, reservations signalled that they could dream of a better life by educating themselves and finding employment with dignity.

Persons with disabilities managed to find a space for themselves in the premier educational institutes and upper echelons of bureaucracy, although still far below their proportion in the population.

But the past several weeks have seen an attack on the progress made possible through a long and arduous struggle.

Misguided attack

The attack on disability reservation has been from two vantage points. The first set of attacks argues for excluding some positions, including the Indian Administrative Services, from the purview of disability reservations. The argument claims that persons with disabilities, due to their inherent limitations, cannot perform the challenging tasks that are a part of these jobs.

The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disability has been issuing “list of posts identified suitable for persons with benchmark disabilities” from time to time. This was last done in 2021 and includes 3,566 posts in the Central government, including 1,046 posts in group A category.

Notwithstanding the fact that the system of identifying posts could also carry inherent biases against persons with disabilities, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of posts identified for various disabilities. Several aspects are considered before identifying a post as suitable for persons having a particular disability.

For example, while persons with locomotive disabilities, visual impairments and hearing impairments are considered for the Indian Administrative Services, only those with locomotive disabilities and hearing impairments are considered for the Indian Audit and Accounts service.

The second set of attacks calls for a reconsideration of disability reservations on account of a few individuals availing the quota using fake certificates. But what actually needs to be reviewed is the points system through which the percentage of disability is assigned.

In the present system, points are given for specific physical deformities. Whether a person is considered as having a benchmark disability is based on the points they receive. Activists have called for changing the manner in which disability is assessed solely from a medical model to one in which functional aspects are considered.

The percentage of disability solely calculated based on the physical aspects alone fails to capture actual limitations that a person might have on account of disability, they point out. The functional limitation of disability, after all, results from a combination of both environmental as well as the physical aspect of disability.

For example, someone with a 30% locomotive disability will not be able to reach a venue in the absence of accessible ramps. There can be many situations in which there is a mismatch between the assigned percentage of disability and the functional limitations. Guidelines should evolve keeping this in mind.

The blame for fake disability certificates should be squarely on the system that allows for the creation of these certificates and the practitioners who issued them.

What needs a review is the system of disability identification – not disability reservations.

These attacks on disability reservations are oblivious to the progress the disabled community made in the last three decades. Reservations for persons with disability and their subsequent appointment to upper echelons of government bureaucracy is only an organic outcome of this progress.

With advances in technology, and the disability rights movement pushing for scientific and reasonable accommodation policies, persons with disability will be equipped to occupy posts that are presently not identified for them.

The only logical way forward for a democratic society is to explore the possibility of extending disability reservations to hitherto unidentified posts and to develop reasonable accommodation policies.

Tony Kurian teaches social science at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He is visually blind.