CONGRESS PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

AT SEMINAR ON

EMPLOYMENT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

CALCUTTA

27 MARCH 1999

Your Excellency Dr Kidwai,

Shri Somnath Chatterjee,

Shri Mumtaz Ahmed,

Shrimati Sudha Kaul,

Shrimati Uma Ahmed,

Shri N Vaghul,

Dr Krishnamurthy,

Shri Javed Abidi,

Friends,

I am glad that the National Centre for the Promotion of Employment for disabled People has cooperated with the Spastics Society of Eastern India to organise this seminar.

I would like to thank you for the honour you have given me on this important auspicious occasion.

We do not really know how many people in our country are afflicted with disability of one kind or the other. Our best guess is that it is of the order of 5-6 per cent of the population, which gives us a minimum absolute figure of 6 crore or 60 million. That is greater than the entire population of the United Kingdom.

Yet, so little do these unfortunate people impinge on our conscience, or even on our consciousness, that the total regular employment generated for this category of persons in our economy as a whole in the last 40 years is under one lakh, that is, less than half a percentage point. The performance has been such as to make all of us hang our heads in shame.

The contrast with other countries is instructive. China has no less than 1600 welfare factories where more than 40 per cent of the workforce is disabled. Tax incentives encourage business enterprises to find it an advantage to employ disabled people. Thus, no business income tax is paid by an enterprise run with a workforce that has 35 per cent or more disabled employees.

If the number of such employees exceeds half the workforce, the enterprise pays no tax of any kind. A disabled person running an individual service, enterprise or commercial business enjoys total tax exemption. In consequence, nearly 70 per cent of all disabled Chinese are employed.

Other countries use a quota system, the figure ranging from 1.5 per cent to 1.9 per cent for the public and private sectors respectively, to 3 per cent in the UK for all those employing more than 20 persons, and up to as much as 6 per cent in Germany for any enterprise employing more than 16 persons. Even in Pakistan, an enterprise with more than 100 employees has to ensure that at least one per cent of these is disabled.

In Africa, Tanzania and Ghana have forged ahead of where we have arrived in India.

It is not an absence of legislation or resources that accounts for this, but a shocking absence of political will. For instance, it took nearly three years from the passage of the Disabilities Act in 1995 for the Government to locate a Chief Commissioner to proceed with implementing the Act.

As Somnath Chatterjee has said: There is a want of compassion, a lack of understanding, an absence of care that is most distressing. The legislation extends to all categories of government employment the provision of a 3 per cent quota available earlier only in C & D category employment. Incentives are extended to the private sector to increase their intake of disabled employees to 5 per cent.

However, results have been tardy because there has been neglect amounting to callousness in putting in place the machinery for implementing the Act. Wherever I meet members of the public, the majority of people who come to see me are disabled and all of them have but one request: finding employment. Why should they have to come to an individual as petitioners for this?

Is it not the responsibility of the Government and of the society at large to provide institutional support for the legitimate aspirations of the disabled?

Employing the disabled is not an act of charity. These 6 crore Indians notwithstanding their disability, constitute a valuable, talented and constructive segment of society.

Mobilising and integrating them into the employment mainstream will dramatically contribute to the growth and modernisation of the economy as a whole. Disability is no longer a welfare or charity issue. It is a development issue, an economic issue, and above all a basic human issue.

The infrastructure for the disabled is impressive only on paper.

There are no less than 23 Special Employment Exchanges for the disabled. not to mention 55 Special Cells. We also have 17 Vocational Training Centres strung across the country which the disabled are encouraged to avail of. Unfortunately, there is no synergy after that stage. The disabled are left to sink or swim as Fate, rather than a sound administration, takes them.

I am told that in 1981, 12,000 disabled persons were placed in employment but the average annual placement since then has slipped to 6000 per annum, and in the decade of the Ninetiesn it has averaged only about 4000 persons a year. In a word, this infrastructure can be said to be a resounding failure.

The private sector has a record that is worse even than that of the Government.

A recent survey conducted by NCPEDP reveals that the disabled constitute under 0.35 per cent of those employed in the corporate sector. Indeed, it is the public sector which leads in these dismal stakes, with 0.49 per cent disabled on its rolls. The domestic private sector comes a poor second with just 0.23 per cent, and worst of all are the multinationals with a pathetic 0.05 per cent.

NCPEDP found through its survey that as many as one third of the respondent companies employed no disabled person at all. And of those who did only 2 of the 61 companies contacted had more than one per cent on their rolls. Not one among the top hundred companies consecrates even 2 per cent of its employment to the disabled.

NCPEDP have organised a joint Core Group with CII to evolve a policy for disabled employment in the private sector. They have also set up a Disability Employment Fund which I trust will attract support from donors. Self-employment for the disabled must also be encouraged. There was scope for this in the Jawahar and Nehru Rozgar Yojanas launched by Rajivji in the year we were celebrating the birth centenary of our first Prime Minister.

Tragically, the schemes have now been re-oriented and renamed. Jawahar has gone and so has Rozgar. Panditji does not need a scheme named after him to find a place in our history and the hearts of our poor. But if prosperity is going to be promoted without the accent on employment, I wounder for whom the new prosperity is designed?

This is the third seminar I have attende over the past five years on this particular topic. Certainly these meetings have a meaningful purpose in raising public awareness levels, educating the disabled about their rights and goading the conscience of society about its larger responsibility to the disabled, both legal and ethical. But the time has come to translate sentiment into concrete action, good intentions into work on the ground.

I am glad that Mrs Kaul has asked Mr Ahmed to prepare a blue print for providing employment.

This will ensure that the next seminar on the employment opportunities for the disabled will have something very substantial to report by way of progress.

I would like to conclude by congratulating all the unsung heroes who have been working over the years to help the disabled towards a dignified and productive life.

Thank you,

Jai Hind!