Controversies
Puja Khedkar, who allegedly faked her disability and caste to obtain benefits, has ignited a debate on the reservations granted to persons with disabilities (PwDs)
Gained further traction when a former CEO of NITI Aayog tweeted that reservations for PwDs need to be reviewed
Such statements raises troubling questions about societal attitudes towards disabilities and reservation policies
Disability reservations
Reservation policies aim to level the playing field by providing equitable opportunities to PwDs.
That a few individuals are exploiting these benefits should not overshadow the broader purpose and impact of such policies.
Sweeping generalisations based on isolated incidents are unfair and counterproductive
PwDs continue to face challenges in both the education and employment sectors
The 76th round of the National Sample Survey in 2018 found that only 23.8% of PwDs were employed, whereas the Labour Force Participation Rate at the national level was 50.2% the same year.
This can be attributed to lack of access to accessible education
Stigma and biases at the hiring stage
Lack of reasonable accommodation at the workplace for PwDs.
The flaws
Supreme Court addressed the potential misuse of scribes in Vikash Kumar v. UPSC (2021).
The argument was that PwDs, if allowed to choose their scribes and if their disability percentage is less than 40%, might misuse this provision
India’s certification system for disabilities has significant flaws.
The practice of quantifying disabilities by percentage is outdated and not supported by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Functional limitations, rather than medical percentages, should be the basis for assessment.
Also, the UPSC insists on a separate and independent disability assessment that results in the issuance of a disability certificate and Unique Disability ID (UDID).
This gives rise to the possibility of the two sets of assessments yielding contradictory results
An additional challenge is the lack of specialists to evaluate various disabilities
it makes the certification process inaccessible and time consuming
Psychosocial disabilities, whose assessment is relatively more subjective, are assessed based on the outdated IDEAS (Indian Disability Evaluation and Assessment Scale) scale
In many cases, such tests are not even conducted.
Persons with invisible, hidden, or less apparent disabilities, such as blood disorders, often face rejection because they “do not look disabled”
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