Sunday, 21 July, was a dark day for India’s disabled community. Two days after the UPSC acknowledged that Puja Khedkar had misused the disability quota and took stringent action against her, came the backlash from certain members of the Indian bureaucracy.
This backlash was led by a post that Smita Sabharwal, a 2001 batch officer from the Telangana cadre, made on X:
“As this debate is blowing up-
With all due respect to the Differently Abled.
Does an Airline hire a pilot with disability? Or would you trust a surgeon with a disability.
The nature of the #AIS ( IAS/IPS/IFoS) is field-work, long taxing hours, listening first hand to people’s grievances-which requires physical fitness.
Why does this premier service need this Quota in the first place!
#justasking”
The tweet was disturbing on many levels. It was trying to shift the debate away from the problem: The misuse of quotas for persons with disabilities (PwD) by those without disabilities, by faking their medical certificates.
I want to remind Sabharwal about the man who ushered in the New Deal for the United States of America, brought back the economy from the Great Crash of 1929, and navigated America through the Second World War. The man is Franklin D Roosevelt, who was diagnosed with polio at a young age. FDR’s biographer, Jean Edward, summed him up nicely: “He lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift the nation from its knees.”
I wonder if Sabharwal knows that in 1986, the West Bengal government selected Sadhan Gupta as its Advocate General. He had served as a Parliament member from the Calcutta South East constituency between 1953 and 1962. Gupta had been blind since childhood after he was inflicted with smallpox.
Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s most revered physicists, had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
But disabilities can also be invisible. Albert Einstein is believed to have had autism and dyslexia. Elon Musk has admitted to having had Asperger’s Syndrome. Did these conditions make any of them less capable?
‘Reasonable accommodations’
Sabharwal wrote about surgeons. A simple Google search would have led her to Dr RS Sindhu, Kerala’s leading liver transplant surgeon. She has polio. Perhaps the IAS officer has heard of leading oncologist Dr Suresh Advani? He has polio too.
Sabharwal also wondered whether pilots with disabilities can be hired by airlines.
I would like to tell her about Douglas Bader, a British fighter pilot during the Second World War. Bader lost both legs in an air accident before the war. He returned to flying with prosthetic legs and became a highly successful fighter ace, with over 20 aerial victories.
I would also like to highlight the case of Jessica Cox who was born without arms. Cox is the world’s first armless pilot and flies a light-sport aircraft using her feet to control the plane. Customisations made to the plane allow her to control the yoke with one foot and the throttle with another. In disability discourse, such customisations are called “reasonable accommodations”.
Sabharwal’s bio on X reads “IAS Officer | Army Brat”. This certainly is interesting because the Indian Army has been the biggest supporter of causes related to disability. Lieutenant General Vijay Oberoi (Retd) lost his right leg in the 1965 India-Pakistan War. That didn’t stop him from reaching the top position in his profession. Major General Ian Cardozo lost his left leg to a landmine in the 1971 war. After his amputation, he wore a wooden leg and took command of an infantry battalion, becoming the first to do so.
Sabharwal would be surprised to know that in the last decade, the government has taken many steps to better integrate people with disabilities into society.
For example, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPwD Act) 2016 increased the number of recognised disabilities from seven to 21. It also revised the quota from 3 per cent to 4 per cent. Section 92 of the Act levied criminal penalties for atrocities against PwDs.
In 2015, Prime Minister Modi launched a disability-related campaign for the first time in India, titled Accessible India Campaign. He has also dedicated multiple episodes of Mann ki Baat to discuss the challenges people with disabilities face and how they can overcome them.
Closer to home, the Department of Personnel & Training has gradually started opening services to persons with various disabilities. This is done through a scientific exercise assessing the functions involved in each post and what categories of disabled individuals can perform them. With the advent of technology, many tasks that were inaccessible to PwDs can now be completed by them with ease.
Also read: Harbhajan wants to ‘move forward’ from distasteful video—he must learn from it first
Strict action is needed
Yes, the Puja Khedkar issue is disturbing. Yes, action needs to be taken. However, the action that is required is stricter regulation of certification and ensuring that those with fake disability certificates are punished—not removing the disabled from the services altogether.
By Sabharwal’s logic, after the 7 July hit-and-run incident in Mumbai, banning BMWs would have been a better solution than arresting Mihir Shah. By the same logic, airlines should stop using tech because of the outage caused by CrowdStrike and POSH committees should cease to exist because some women misuse them.
Sabharwal needs to know that having people with disabilities around is not charity. It also leads to innovation. Did you know electric toothbrushes were created in 1954 to aid those with locomotor disabilities? Today, they are widely used around the world.
Do you use an Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant? All three use speech-to-text and voice recognition technologies created for those who can’t write. Audiobooks were initially invented for persons with visual impairments but are used by many today.
It was disappointing to read Sabharwal‘s tweet. However, I fear that her views are shared by many others. It would have even been worth it if she allowed the responses she received to educate her on why she was wrong, instead, she doubled down. After 77 years of Independence, this country should have no space for such discourse.
Nipun Malhotra is a disability rights activist. He tweets @nipunmalhotra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
we need strict regulations to check the misuse and at same time person with disability must be treated in dignified manner. There should not be harrasment in the name of regulations.