IASbhai Daily Editorial Hunt | 16th Sep 2020

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.– Elon Musk

Dear Aspirants
IASbhai Editorial Hunt is an initiative to dilute major Editorials of leading Newspapers in India which are most relevant to UPSC preparation –‘THE HINDU, LIVEMINT , INDIAN EXPRESS’ and help millions of readers who find difficulty in answer writing and making notes everyday. Here we choose two editorials on daily basis and analyse them with respect to UPSC MAINS 2020.

EDITORIAL HUNT #139 :“Exclusionary Mindsets and Disability | UPSC“

Rahul Bajaj

Exclusionary Mindsets and Disability | UPSC

Rahul Bajaj is a Judicial Law Clerk at the Supreme Court of India

HEADLINES:

Impediments to equal productivity, dignity

CENTRAL THEME:

Doing right by disabled professionals is still considered more a favour than as affording them their right to full inclusion

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 2 : THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES ACT, 2016

MAINS QUESTION:

Exclusionary mindset and the inability to recognize the disabled as rights-bearing citizens contradicts equal treatment for all. Discuss -(GS 2)

LEARNING:

Everyday Pain of Disables
Exclusions
Data Access

INTRODUCTION:

As a disabled person inhabiting a world designed for the able-bodied, one learns to put up with a lot of indignities that others would consider unacceptable.

THE EVERYDAY PAIN

EXCLUSION : The everyday pain of being excluded from a whole host of normal life activities.
FINDING DIGNITY : The challenge of having to constantly find ways of living with equal productivity and dignity as others which the able-bodied often simply do not have to think about.
STEREOTYPES : Even so, sometimes, one is overcome by the hot, white anger of something so irredeemably unfair that it cannot be just treated as one of the thousand cuts the disabled face everyday.

BODY:

DIGNITY AND DISABILITY STATUTES

RIGHT TO LIFE : The State shall ensure that the persons with disabilities enjoy the right to equality, life with dignity and respect for his or her integrity equally with others.
DISCRIMINATION : No person with disability shall be discriminated on the ground of disability, unless it is shown that the impugned act or omission is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
LIBERTY : No person shall be deprived of his or her personal liberty only on the ground of disability.

ACCESS TO A DATABASE

MASSIVE GAP : Appropriate tools and resources, are incapable of achieving and what they are allowed to achieve, on account of the multiple impediments placed in their path.

EXAMPLE

SCC Online is India’s premier legal database used by practising lawyers, accessible to persons with disabilities.

ONLY DATABASE : This database is the only online supplier of true copies of judgments.
BARRIERS : SCC Online has accessibility barriers — unlabelled links, search filters which cannot be applied with screen readers, and the text of judgments being inaccessible due to security settings.
PRODUCTIVITY : This incident vividly brings to light two fundamental issues that prevent the disabled from leading lives of equal dignity and productivity.

AN EXCLUSIONARY MINDSET

B.K. PAVITRA VS. UNION OF INDIA : SC – Our benchmarks will define our outcomes. If this benchmark of efficiency is grounded in exclusion, it will produce a pattern of governance which is skewed against the marginalised.
V. SURENDRA MOHAN VS. STATE OF TAMIL NADU : Supreme Court of India held last year,that ‘Tamil Nadu’s policy, of reserving the post of civil judge only for people whose percentage of blindness does not exceed 40-50%, was rational and reasonable.
IMPACT : It ruled that a judicial officer has to possess a reasonable amount of sight and hearing to discharge her functions.
ESSENCE OF VERDICT : It accepted the claim that impaired vision makes it impossible to perform the functions required of judicial officers.

The fallacy in this line of thinking is that it starts with the wrong premise(argument).

RIGHT TO PROFESSION : Instead of starting with the premise that a blind person is as much entitled as anyone else to freely choose what profession they wish to pursue.
FILTERING BARRIERS : Any barriers on their path must be attenuated, it instead starts on the premise that the existing ways of doing things will always remain the way they are, so tough luck to those whom they exclude.

IASbhai Windup:

COMPLIANCE ON ACCESSIBILITY

PUBLIC IMAGINATION : Doing right by the disabled is still widely considered a function of the goodness of one’s heart, a favour that constitutes one’s good deed for the day.
INCLUSION IS KEY : The project of affording them full inclusion and access is not thought of as their right which everyone must help vindicate.
DISABILITIES ACT : Section 46 of the Act requires all service providers, public or private, to comply with the rules on accessibility framed by the State.

We sing praises of the disabled who achieve success despite the obstacles placed on their path, we do not pause to reflect on what it is that makes it so hard for them to succeed in the first place.

SUGGESTED READING : https://bit.ly/2ZDREDL

SOURCES: THE HINDU EDITORIAL HUNT | Exclusionary Mindsets and Disability | UPSC

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