Disabled workers in India: lifting the barriers

Struck by polio at birth, Shivalinge Gowda is paralysed from the waist down. Chronic fatigue and muscle pains that severely restrict Gowda’s movement mean that he is wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. As a child, he never felt normal and was teased by other students in school because of his disability. He had to leave school after class 10 as the high school was located 15-20 km away from his home, and the public transport system was not accessible for disabled people.

“While using buses, I had to rely on the kindness of strangers as most buses are inaccessible to people who are using crutches or wheelchairs, or who have any kind of limb deformity, or limb disability and find it difficult to walk or move around,” he said.

Photograph: iStock credit SDI Productions

After quitting school, Gowda went through a long phase of low self-confidence and isolation at home. Despite his low morale, he managed to get back up and find a job at a Bangalore accounting firm. He spent five years at the firm. According to Gowda, his employers never felt that his disability would prevent him from completing his work to a high standard or negatively impact his performance.

“The office was also very accessible for disabled people like me, and my workspace, including the desk and the chair, was very comfortable,” he said. “I was never treated unfairly just because I have a disability. That is why I could put in my best performance and spend five happy years.” 

Gowda was fortunate to have worked for a company that understood his needs at all stages of employment, even though stereotypes of disabled people as incapable, unambitious, unreliable, not interested in working and costly to employ still abound.

“The firm even made a few reasonable adjustments to make the workplace accessible and safe for me,” said Gowda. He was provided with accommodation in the office premises along with colleagues who supported him with his daily chores, such as getting ready for work.

Gowda added that having got a job, he wanted to keep it more than any other job seeker because it took him five times as much effort to get into employment.

Unfortunately, the company shut down because of a financial crunch, and Gowda had to return to his native village in Tumkur district in Karnataka.

After three years of planning and an investment of Rs 200,000, Gowda now runs a printing and mobile recharging shop in his village. “My stint at the firm gave me the confidence to run my own shop. Moreover, in those five years, I learnt to expect more from myself,” he said.

In 1987, at the age of 14, Balachandra Hegde lost his left leg while he was checking out the new grass-cutting machine his father had ordered at the farm near his house in Bhairumbe village in Karnataka. Due to a technical fault, one of the machine’s blades flew off and severely cut his leg.

Hegde, who is vice-president and lead of software at the banking and financial services company Wells Fargo in India, says workplaces are changing, and many Indian companies now have equal opportunity policies aimed at encouraging and supporting disabled people get into and remain in work. 

Hegde, who completed his diploma in electronics from NTTF Electronics Training Center in 1993, has also worked for JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs in the past.

Inclusive culture at tech company
Meanwhile, Sadaf Khan, who has a visual impairment, says that working as a recruiting senior analyst in Accenture is a dream come true. She says she always aspired to be part of the tech company’s inclusive culture – where everyone is equal and valued for their unique skills and ingenuity.

“I was pleasantly surprised when the leadership took notice of my messages on LinkedIn and responded to me personally with utmost warmth,” said Khan, who has an MA in industrial and organisational psychology from the Mithibai College of Arts alumni.

“Honestly, being sightless was not seen as a barrier at all. The entire recruitment process was handled with utmost sensitivity towards my needs. Today, I am pursuing a barrier-free career.”

Lack of opportunities
Like Gowda, Hegde and Khan, most disabled people want to work, but in India there are fewer opportunities for them to develop their skills and experience. They also face practical hurdles, such as inaccessible public and private transport to and from work, and often experience negative attitudes from bosses.

Also, those who have managed to build successful careers say that at every stage they have had to go the extra mile to make it happen as the majority of companies do not have proactive plans or policies to encourage and support the employment of disabled people. 

According to a study by jobs portal Indeed in March this year, only one in five organisations or less employ LGBTIQ+ and disabled people.

“The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 mandates four per cent reservation in jobs in the government sector for the disabled, but the private sector was not assigned any kind of responsibility for giving jobs to the disabled,” noted Uttam Kumar Verma, PhD scholar in the Department of History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. “Because of the free hand offered to the private sector, it has never cared for employability and equal opportunity for the disabled.”

However, Wells Fargo started hiring disabled people in 2017 and the number of disabled people in its workforce has since grown significantly.

Wells Fargo’s Diverse Abilities Employee Networks, launched in August 2019 in India and the Philippines, aims to facilitate a greater understanding of the disabled via education, and to increase disability awareness among employees and customers.

“Our goal is to help develop an inclusive workplace in which people of all abilities can reach their full potential,” said a Wells Fargo spokesperson. “Our focus is to ensure our infrastructure is disability-friendly and our policy and practices help us attract the best talent. In India, we have organised for an exclusive hiring drive for differently-abled candidates.”

Wells Fargo employs disabled people in mainstream roles that contribute to the growth of the company and businesses – from technology and operations to human resources and risk.

Photograph: iStock credit Edwin Tan

Meanwhile, the business and management consultancy services company Accenture believes in creating an accessible, inclusive environment where all its people belong and thrive.

“When we eliminate the barriers to socio-economic inclusion of the disabled, we create a safe environment where everyone feels they belong,” said Sanjay Dawar, managing director & lead – capability network, global network (Argentina, India & Poland) & strategy, at Accenture.

In India, Accenture employs over 6,000 disabled workers.

Supporting disabled people to thrive at work
Indian businesses looking to boost the number of disabled employees in their teams should perhaps draw inspiration from the country’s hospitality group Lemon Tree Hotels Limited, where an impressive 11–12 per cent of the workforce are disabled.

Staff at Lemon Tree receive training so they understand why the company actively supports the employment of disabled people and why they as individuals should both support disabled colleagues to thrive at work and not be fearful of working alongside someone with a disability.

“A simple act of avoiding too many last-minute schedules could be helpful for a disabled person as planning is the key to successfully navigating their day,” said a Lemon Tree spokesperson.

The group employs people with both mental and physical disabilities, including autism, orthopaedic disability, visual or hearing impairments and Down’s syndrome, among others.

Although in the past technology has often not been designed to allow people with disabilities to easily use it, technology companies now work strive to ensure that anyone can use their products.

For instance, Gowda uses his smartphone to manage his business and personal ledger. He uses the digital ledger app, Khatabook, to manage his account and keep track of the money owed to him by customers at his village shop. “Khatabook is very easy to use, makes bookkeeping simple and allows me to get payments really quickly,” he says.

A report from Accenture, AI for disability inclusion: Enabling change with advanced technology, reveals how the responsible and ethical design, development and use of AI (artificial intelligence) can unlock the potential of people with disabilities in the workplace, while helping all workers to thrive.

The report suggests some of the key steps employers, academics, regulators, policymakers, investors and developers can take to leverage AI’s potential as an enabler of change for disability inclusion at work. For example, it highlights how AI-powered tools and apps can help people with visual impairments navigate their travel and work environments independently, improving their lives in general and boosting their ability to work effectively and independently.

However, it also warns that AI software used for assessing job candidates that attempts to predict how a candidate will perform in the role by analysing factors on display in their job interview such as gestures, tone, and cadence could be biased against persons with disabilities, who might present with a range of characteristics that would not hinder their work performance but could affect how their potential is scored.

‘1.3 crore disabled people could get employment, with support’
Meanwhile, a report published by the market intelligence company Unearthinsight in 2021 said that the right policies and strategic shifts could enhance employment opportunities for people with disabilities in India, and around half of disabled people in India have the potential to be employed.

According to the report, India has almost three crore disabled people, of which around 1.3 crore are employable. However, only 34 lakh of the 1.3 crore have been employed in the organised and unorganised sectors, in government-led schemes or are self-employed.

“Technology and retail are leading the way in skilling and creating employment opportunities for the disabled talent pool,” said the report. “The organised retail sector employs over 13,000 disabled professionals whereas over 8,000 disabled professionals are employed by the technology sector.”

The banking and financial services sector is an emerging employer for disabled talent and the State Bank of India is the largest employer of disabled people in back and front-office jobs in the financial sector, says the report.

In fact, banks and the railways are the two major sectors that employ disabled employees on a large scale. The possibility of disabled people being employed in banks and railways has increased with the implementation of the reservation policy for disabled workers in the 2016 Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, which mandates that four per cent of job vacancies in government-run organisations must be allocated to disabled people.

“The public sector has followed the reservation policy for the employment in PSUs [public sector undertakings] and institutions, which has directly benefited several disabled persons and contributed towards their economic independence,” added Uttam Kumar Verma from the Department of History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh.

Verma fears that with the proposed privatisation of certain banks and railways, existing disabled employees in these organisations could be at risk of losing their hard-earned jobs.

“In future, with the absence of reservation policy [to mandate a set percentage of disabled employees] in the private sector, they may never get employment, despite possessing the abilities and skills,” he argues.

Call for legal minimum of private sector job vacancies to be reserved for disabled people
Many civil society organisations seeking to support for the welfare of disabled people have called on the central government to legally require the private sector to employ a set proportion of disabled people. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 only “incentivises” the private sector to reserve or allocate five per cent of job vacancies for disabled people.

Meanwhile, the draft National Policy for Persons with Disabilities, which was published in June, proposes a dedicated job portal for disabled people, among other things.

Although campaigners say the draft has many good provisions – such as those aimed at ensuring that disabled people do not have to make multiple trips to get certificates to prove they are disabled – they warn that chapters related to skills development, education and disaster management need more work.

In a meeting to discuss the draft policy held in July, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said it wished to see wider political representation and involvement in the government’s decision-making for disabled people.

Many gaps and suggestions emerged during the meeting. The NHRC will deliberate upon all the points highlighted and come up with a relevant document which will be sent to the central government, an official statement said.

The policy, currently open to public feedback, reflects India’s commitment to ensure all its laws and policies comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the existing requirements and aims of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.