Don’t view disability through charity lens
In June, the Centre embarked on a process to ‘decriminalise minor offences for improving business sentiment and unclogging court processes’.
As part of this, the government proposed an amendment to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act of 2016, removing the penal provisions under three sections: Section 89 (Punishment for contravention of provisions of Act or rules), Section 92A (Punishment for offences of atrocities) and Section 93 (Punishment for failure to furnish information).
Of these three provisions, only Section 92A allows for a jail term, the other two only providing for fines. Significantly, the government did not propose any change to Section 91 (Punishment for fraudulently availing any benefit meant for persons with benchmark disabilities). Disability rights activists rightly protested the proposal, which was withdrawn just a week after being floated.
While the government’s willingness to heed criticism is appreciated, questions arise as to why this law was studied from an ‘ease of doing business’ perspective. The RPDA replaced a 1995 Act that was widely seen as toothless.
It was passed to bring India’s laws in compliance with the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and while it still falls short of disabled persons’ aspirations, it provides a rights-based framework in a world that persists in viewing disability through a lens of charity.
Three years since the legislation was passed, several states are yet to pass the rules necessary to bring it to life.
Few—if any—cases have been brought under Section 92A, despite several documented instances. In this context, the very notion of such an amendment smacks of a mentality that still views the systemic discrimination against which persons with disabilities struggle as “minor offences” that obstruct the functioning of businesses.
Economic progress cannot and should not come at the cost of individual rights. Penal provisions are the teeth required to ensure the rights provided by the Act are available to all persons with disabilities.
The proposed amendment suggests that the government has yet to view disability from the rights-based perspective of its own legislation.