TIMES NATION | Can & Able

DISABLED POPULATION BY AGE GROUP

17.2

Differently abled who crack

civil services often fight legal
wars for service they deserve

ra Singhal, a woman with disabilities, topping the civil services this year, symbolised the
travails and triumph of the decade-long fight of the disabled to
gain acceptance in the prestigious
civil services.
Despite being selected, she
had earlier been denied a posting
citing her disability and she was
ghting a case in the Central Administrative Tribunal when she
topped the exam and got IAS.
The 245 disabled candidates
allocated various civil services in
the last decade is testimony to the
success of the disability sectors
battle despite the Department of
Personnel and Training (DoPT)
nding new ways to harass disabled candidates who crack the
civil services examinations.
The declaration of results
each year is invariably followed
by court cases
led by selected
disabled candidates ghting to get into services
of their choice and ones they deserve based on their rank.
Of the 245 allotted a service
between 2005 and 2014, 121 have
locomotor disability, 79 have
hearing problems and 45 have
visual disability. The largest
number (45) has been allocated
to the Revenue Service (Customs
and Central Excise), while IAS
has inducted 43.
The Revenue Service (I-T),
Group A, has absorbed 41 such
candidates. Six with hearing impairment, two with locomotor
disability and one with visual
impairment have been inducted

into the Foreign Service.

In this decade, 8,652 candidates were allotted to various
civil services. The 245 with disabilities constituted 2.83% of the
total, just short of the 3% reservation mandated by the 1995 Disability Act.
Roughly 2,000 made it to the
civil services between 2000 and
2004. Had the disability quota
been implemented, about 60 of
them wouldve been disabled
candidates. Barely 10 such actually got in during this period.
In 2000, Manoj Sadasivan, a
hearing impaired, was given no
service despite being ranked 222
out of 411, as there was no reservation for the disabled. His candidature was rejected on medical
tness grounds despite the president and even Kerala HC intervening favourably.
Ravi Kumar Arora, selected
in 2001, was rejected for low vision. He wasnt
even being allowed to appear
again for the exam under the
disability quota. After a court
battle, he took the exam again,
got selected in 2005 and was allocated IAS.
Similarly, Avikal Manu was
selected in 2004 but told that his
polio-affected right arm made
him ineligible. He cleared the
exam again in 2006 and with
court help and the PMs intervention was allocated IRS.
In 2002, Rigzian Samphel and
Lokesh Kumar, both physically
challenged, had secured the120th
and 132nd ranks among the 286
selected that year. They were relegated to the Indian Information
Service though they were eligible for IAS. Only after they went
to court and the PM stepped in
they were allocated IAS. Its the
struggle of several such determined candidates thats opened
the doors for the disabled in the
civil services.
While the overall picture
now seems encouraging, it hides
anomalies that persist such as
allocating the disabled a service
lower than what theyre entitled
to. Many accept it quietly.
The data hides the fact that
many successful candidates
were allocated a service only
after ghting long battles. Thousands of candidates with disabilities continue to take UPSC
exams every year, though even
today several are sent home after
being selected.

LONG WALK HOME

CIVIL GROUND?
Candidates allocated service
Year

Total

2014

1073
1190
1044
957
987
933
839
705
491
433
8652

2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
Total

Disabled % of
candidates total

41
23
29
30
25
29
19
21
16
12
245

3.8
1.9
2.8
3.1
2.5
3.1
2.3
3.0
3.3
2.8
2.8

13.6

11.6

4.8 7.3

Access denied: How babus find

ways to disable an able cause
Rema.Nagarajan@timesgroup.com

15.6

9.3 9.9 6.6

70-79

80-89

60-69

268.1
Male 149.9
Female 118.2
Total

THE DISABLED
POPULATION WENT
UP TO JUST 268M IN
CENSUS 2011 FROM
219M IN CENSUS
2001, FROM 2.13%
OF THE
POPULATION IN
2001 TO 2.21%

50-59

23.9
23.9
8.8
20.7
6.3
3.1
22.0
9.5

40-49

Female

26.4
26.8
11.2
33.7
8.7
4.2
27.3
11.6

30-39

Male

20-29

The Census shows 2.2% of Indias population faces some

form of disability. This is in contrast to populations in
neighbouring nations such as China, Nepal, Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka, where people with disabilities (PWDs)
account for about 4%-6% of the population. It is likely that
lack of awareness of the enhanced definition of disability
in Census 2011 could have led to severe under-counting of
the disabled population in the countrys rural areas

Total

50.3
In Hearing
50.7
In Speech
20.0
In Movement
54.4
Mental Retardation 15.1
Mental Illness
7.2
Any Other
49.3
Multiple Disability 21.2
In Seeing

10-19

Disability

TOTAL NO.
OF DISABLED
PERSONS IN
INDIA (LAKH)

5-9

DIFFERENTLY ABLED COUNT

THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2015

0-4

16

AGE IN YEARS

AGE NOT
STATED

2.7 90+
0.8 0.5

Source: Census 2011

INDIANS FIGHT BACK

A collection of success stories, big
and small, from around the country
THE ANSWER TO A LANDMINE LOSS
Florencia Castigo,18,
lost her right leg in a
landmine blast in
Mozambique in 2013.
Two years later, with the
famous Jaipur Foot to
her rescue, she can walk
again. Our constant
endeavour is to improve
the product and give them to the needy for
free, says D R Mehta, founder and chief patron
of the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayta
Samiti, the makers of the Jaipur foot. As many
as 23,483 disabled from various countries have
TNN
used it to get back on their feet.

A VISION TO SEAL A SECURE LIFE

FIGHTING FOR A LEG-UP

PROS:

T H E L AW | W H AT WO R K S, W H AT D O E S N T

Before 1995, there was no

law protecting the disabled
against discrimination

The Constitution prohibits

discrimination on grounds
of gender, caste, religion
etc but disability is not
mentioned in the list

The Disability Act 1995

is the rst and only
law to protect people with
disabilities (PWD)

Till the law, the attitude

towards PWDs in India
was one of charity and pity.
The Act was the rst to
recognise the rights of PWDs

Law gave the disabled

3% reservation in higher
education and in employment

It talked about making

buildings, roads, transport
facilities etc accessible

Until the law, few knew

the difference between
psychosocial and intellectual
disability; they did not
distinguish between low

vision and being blind

8
9
10

Disabled people took

matters to court to get
laws provisions implemented
This helped the law get
interpreted

The provision for

education that came
up before the SC and high
courts was interpreted as:
Appropriate governments
shall ensure that every child
with disability is provided free
and compulsory education till
the age 18 in an appropriate
environment

11

As a result, education
prospects got better.
Now there is a smattering
of students with disability
across top colleges, IITs, IIMs,
law and journalism schools;
institutions where they were
earlier denied admission

12

Laying down the rules

by which reservation
in higher education would be
distributed across various
disability groups was also
worked out in the courts

13

Computation of
reservation, against
total available cadre posts
came through only with SCs
intervention

14

The 3% reservation
for PWDs was once
restricted to lesser jobs on
the assumption that the
disabled couldnt cope up

15

PWDs extended the

ght and opened up
several professions such
as the civil services and
the medical profession for
people with certain kinds of
disabilities, which was earlier
completely barred to PWDs

The Disability Act of 1995, for its time, is a

very good law which helped India move away
from a culture of charity and pity to one of equality
and rights
JAVED ABIDI | NCPEDP

CONS:

Act has no clear provision or enforcement

mechanism for implementation, no penalty
for non-implementation either

n 2001, only five of the 24

civil services were open to the
disabled. None of them was
open to visually challenged candidates. Today, all but three services have reservation for some
kind of disability or the other,
although the system of deciding
the person of what level of disability can do what job remains
arbitrary and illogical.
Many of the disabled who
are selected are allocated lower services than their ranking merits on the plea that
the nature of their disability
prevents them doing the job in
most services.
No job can be done by all
people, said Javed Abidi of
the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for
Disabled People (NCPEDP).
Everyone cannot be an as-

tronaut or even a mechanical

engineer. But every job can be
performed by some disabled
person. So it makes no sense
to bar an entire service to per-

WORLD
DISABILITY DAY
December 3
sons with disability as in the
case of the Indian Police Service or the Indian Forest Service, where there is too much
focus on physical tness, as if
mental prowess does not matter, he added.
How is a candidate deemed
unt for a service?
The answer lies in a bizarre
list of services identied suitable for physically disabled
category along with physical
requirements and functional
classication published in

TNN

A LESSON ON BREACHING BARRIERS

20 years after the law, not even govt

buildings are accessible; accessibility not
mandatory to approve construction projects

Chief Commissioner
of Persons with
Disabilities (CCPD) ought
to be expert of disability
issues. The position
rendered toothless by
posting here secretary
of disability affairs
department, mostly
temporary bureaucrats
who hold the post as an
additional charge

Till the
Disability
Act there was
no law.... But
it has no teeth
and no penal
provision for
non-implementation
P MURALIDHARAN
| NPRD

Issue of CCPD being a

person with disability
not yet settled

Discrimination in identication of
suitable jobs. Bulk of jobs still closed to
PWDs, issue not addressed

Huge backlog of vacancies/posts reserved

for PWDs with government showing
little interest in lling them, despite court
intervention

Arm-twisting norms a severe letdown

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mukta and Pankaj Dagli from Gujarats

Surendranagar launched Pragyachakshu
Mahila Sewa Sangh in 1996. Today the
organisation supports 200 girls and has
so far helped 152 blind girls marry. Fifty
of these girls returned to the organisation
for their first childbirth as they consider it
their parents home.

the gazette. It lays down what

service a successful candidate
with disability can get.
Nine years after this issue of identication was rst
brought to the notice of the
government, this arbitrary
process continues. For instance, the Delhi Andaman
and Nicobar Islands Police
Service (DANIPS) is open to
those with one leg affected or
whose hearing is impaired.
But there is no place for people
with these or any other disability in either the Pondicherry Police Service or the Indian
Police Service (IPS).
How different can the job
be in different police services?
All accounts services, the
Indian P&T Accounts & Finance Service, Gr.A, Indian
Civil Accounts Service, Gr. A
and Indian Railway Accounts
Service are open to someone

with one arm (OA) or one leg

(OL) affected or with one arm
and one leg affected (OAL) and
to those with both legs affected
(BL). However, the Indian Audit & Accounts Service Gr. A
alone is not open to persons
with both legs affected.
Why is only this accounts
service not open to people with
both legs affected? Nobody
seems to know.
One result of this bizarre
system of deciding what
disability makes one ineligible for which service is that
most jobs under the quota are
secured by those with relatively minor disabilities.
You would have hardly seen
an ofcer in a wheelchair or
one who is completely blind or
deaf, points out Abidi, raising
the concern that this is beginning to drive a wedge within
those with disabilities.

The family of Mumbais Kalpana Kharade

realised she suffered from retinitis pigmentosa,
a condition that leads to loss of vision, when
she was 13. She went to Russia for treatment
but the procedure failed. She stayed on,
completed a PhD in education before returning
to India and beginning to teach. She now helps
visually impaired students learn science and
received the National Role Model award from
VINAMRATA BORWANKAR
the President in 2014.

AN EYE FOR EDUCATION

Girdhar Mishra of Chitrakoot
was 11 when he resolved to not
let his blindness define his life.
He is now called Jagadguru
Rambhadracharya, has
completed a PhD and is a
scholar of 22 languages and
dialects. I always say, dream big, says the
Padma Vibhushan recipient who has also
founded a college and the Jagadguru
Rambhadracharya Handicapped University for
RAJEEV MANI
differently-abled students.

EMPLOYMENT OF BEST INTENTIONS

Prajakta Pendurkar, who is speech and hearing

impaired, is set to join the retail industry after
undergoing a 60-day training programme
launched by Mumbais PankhWings of Destiny,
a joint initiative of Trust for Retailers and Retail
Associates of India and the Youth 4 Jobs
Foundation. I want to be financially
independent, she says through a sign language
interpreter. I dont want to be a burden on my
parents and my country. MOHAMMED WAJIHUDDIN

India wants legally binding pact on Climate resilience: Delhi promises

aid for poor countries green shift better groundwater management
AP

Vishwa.Mohan
@timesgroup.com

Paris: On the back of reports

in the western media terming
it obstructionist at the on-going climate summit, India on
Wednesday strongly put forward its point and made it
clear that the country wants a
legally binding agreement
that enables financial support from the countries which
have developed on the basis of
cheap energy to those which
have to meet their energy demand through more expensive zero carbon sources.
India also made it clear
that it won't shy away from extending financial support the
way China promised as part of
the South-South cooperation.
The country at the same
time made it clear that such
post-2020 financial contribution from India will not be
part of the climate finance
under the Green Climate
Fund (GCF) -- an international mechanism where the rich
countries are expected to annually contribute US $ 100 billion from 2020 onwards to
help poor and developing
countries fight challenges of
climate change.
Articulating India's point,
key negotiator Ajay Mathur
said, We are completely in fa-

Argentinian artist Pedro Marzoratis artwork Where the Tides Ebb and
Flow highlighting the rise in sea levels due to global warming on
display at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris

vour of the agreement that

helps create the kind of legal
binding that is necessary for
such an agreement to be actually implemented by countries -- that is far more important than the countries just
signing on it.
On the sticky financial issue which is seen by the rich
world as something which
may even be looked into outside the agreement, Mathur
clearly said, We look forward
to an agreement that enables
financial support from the
countries that have developed
on the back of cheap energy to
those which have to meet

their energy demand by more

expensive but low carbon zero
carbon energy. We believe
technology is going to play a
major role in this and therefore access to technology and
enabling collaboration are going to be amazingly important for us.
Referring to the country's
stand on stocktaking of what
all the countries have promised through their respective
climate action plans - called
Intended Nationally Determined
Contributions
(INDCs), Mathur said, We
would like the countries as
they put forward their INDCs

Reuters

to look at them periodically -the global stocktaking process in the agreement is something we like so the world as a
whole can periodically see
what is it that they are all doing and where is the world going because of their actions.
As a result of these global
stocktakes for which the ownership should be with the
countries, they should then
look at their next set of INDCs
to be more challenging and
more ambitious than what
they have put in now.
So, we are looking at what I
think always is called progression principle (no backsliding principle) that each
one of us delivers more in
each cycles of commitment
that we take.
He further elaborated that
the country would also like
that all countries periodically
provide information of their
actions. We have started
with it and will continue with
the process what that is called
the biennial update report.
There are guidelines which
says how it is done and how it
is discussed at the global forum, said Mathur.
On the question of periodicity of the review, he said it
was a matter of negotiation
and it was very difficult at this
juncture to spell it out.

Vishwa.Mohan@timesgroup.com

Paris: A broad coalition of

nations including India, river
basin organisations, business and civil societies from
across the globe on Wednesday announced the Paris Pact
on Water and Climate Change
Adaptation to make water
systems the very foundation of sustainable human development more resilient
to climate impact.
These major collaborative
projects represent over $20
million
in
TOI AT
technical asPARIS
SUMMIT sistance and
potentially over $1 billion in
financing.
India, on its part, committed to build climate resilience
through improved groundwater management in the coun- Member of the Yankton Dakota and Chickasaw First Nations, hereditary chief Phil Lane Jr, briefs the media
try. Almost 290 water basin or- during the World Climate Change Conference 2015 at Le Bourget, near Paris on Wednesday
ganisations are engaged under
ties. It will provide enhanced tion involves a wide geographthe Paris Pact on Water and with oceans.
The LPAA is a joint under- support to existing initia- ic coalition of national and
Climate Change Adaptation.
The announcement was taking of the Peruvian and tives, such as those launched cross-border river basin orgapart of the Water Resilience French COP (conference of during the New York UN nisations, governments, fundFocus event under the Lima parties) presidencies, the Of- secretary general climate ing agencies, companies and
to Paris Action Agenda fice of the Secretary-General of summit in September 2014 civil societies.
It encompasses individual
(LPAA) on climate change. It the United Nations, and the and help mobilise new partners, providing them a plat- commitments to implement
also highlighted other key UNFCCC Secretariat.
It aims to strengthen cli- form for the visibility of their adaptation plans, strengthenpartnerships and coalitions
to make river basins, lakes, mate action through 2015 by actions and results in the run ing water monitoring systems
in river basins and promoting
aquifers and deltas more re- mobilizing robust global ac- up to COP21.
The Paris Pact on Water financial sustainability in wasilient to climate change and tion towards low carbon,
reduce human interference more climate resilient socie- and Climate Change Adapta- ter systems management.