The Supreme Court judgment in Vikash Kumar v. UPSC (“Vikash Kumar”) holding that an individual suffering from dysgraphia or writer’s cramp is entitled to a scribe in the Civil Services Examination (CSE) is a significant step towards affirming the position of persons with disabilities as rights bearers.
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The Court said that the government needs to shed its “fundamental fallacy” that only persons with a specific disability of 40 per cent or more should be provided with a scribe while taking examinations such as the Civil Services Examination. The bench led by Justice D Y Chandrachud held that this arbitrary prerequisite clearly violates the plain terms and object of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPwD) Act, 2016.
This case arose from the denial of services of a scribe to the petitioner, Vikash Kumar. Kumar has a disability commonly known as writer’s cramp. After having graduated with an MBBS degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Post Graduate Medical Instruction and Research, he aspired to crack the UPSC exams.
While deciding the case, the bench opined that a scribe’s service is as per the statutory mandate to enable persons with disabilities to live a life of dignity and equality, based upon respect in society for their mental and bodily integrity. This will ensure that they are no longer treated as second-class citizens.
The Court opined that the higher threshold as a benchmark for disability could not be levied to deny equal access to persons with disabilities. The Court cited Jeeja Ghosh v. Union of India, wherein it was held that equality is not just limited to prevention of discrimination but also extends to a wide variety of positive rights, including “reasonable accommodation”.
In this context, the state has an obligation to provide persons with disabilities reasonable accommodation such as the facility of a scribe, compensatory time, etc., to secure substantive equality.
The Court endeavoured to translate “human dignity” enshrined in the Preamble into the legal regime for recognition and enforcement of rights of persons with disabilities when it said: “Part III of our Constitution does not explicitly include persons with disabilities within its protective fold. However, much like their able-bodied counterparts, the golden triangle of Articles 14, 19 and 21 applies with full force and vigour to the disabled.”
This judgment gave a befitting reply to the case of V Surendra Mohan v. State of Tamil Nadu (“Surendra Mohan”), in which the Supreme Court upheld the state’s policy of restricting the eligibility of blind and deaf candidates and refused to allow a visually disabled person from becoming a judge.
The apex court also directed the Centre to come up with norms and guidelines within three months to protect the rights of persons with disabilities to appear in the examinations with the help of scribes for the progressive realisation of the rights of disabled people, in tune with the RPwD Act of 2016.
The judgment in Vikash Kumar is progressive. It recognises that persons with disabilities could discharge their duties if reasonable accommodation is being provided to them by overruling the judgment of Surendra Mohan. There have been many examples from different countries in the world where judges with disabilities are effectively discharging their duties.
Justice Chandrachud himself said in a session organised by the Nyaya Forum of NALSAR University of Law that modern technology has enabled disabled persons so much so that there exists almost no difference today between them and the general population. He also said that we must have in due course the first judge of the Supreme Court who would be visually impaired.
In the judgment, Justice Chandrachud cautioned against perpetuating the negative imagery around disability: “When competent persons with disabilities are unable to realise their full potential due to the barriers posed in their path, our society suffers, as much, if not more, as do the disabled people involved. In their blooming and blossoming, we all bloom and blossom.”
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.