A System That Fails to Recognise Merit in Persons With Disabilities

After securing first division marks with 94.6% in his senior secondary examinations, 20 year old Adarsh Kumar, from Palamu Jharkhand, made the merit list of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) special enrolment scheme for persons with disabilities. 

Little did Adarsh know that he would be harassed and rejected by the local authorities representing the Department of Posts, under the Ministry of Communication. They did not see a meritorious candidate, rather an inconvenience to be rejected on a misplaced technicality. 

The sarkari babus equated being deaf (speech and hearing impaired) with having “multiple disabilities,” and used this manufactured confusion to deny him his rightful appointment, contravening the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016. 

Although the scheme only provided contractual employment, it was a major achievement for a young man who would have been the first in his family to secure a “government job”, allowing him to earn and support his family. His appointment would have also proved – not only to his village, but to a system that underestimates persons with disabilities – that he could contribute meaningfully to society. 

Prabhat Kumar, Adarsh’s father made frantic calls and knocked on the doors of the local authorities, showing his son’s exemplary marksheet and disability and economically weaker section certificate. 

He exhausted every local channel in trying to explain a simple fact: “Mukh badhir aur badhir ek hi category mein aate hein, mere bete ko doh disability nahin hai (both ‘speech and hearing impaired’ and ‘deaf’ come under the same category, my son doesn’t have two disabilities.)

After struggling for more than six months and consulting the all-knowing village elders, he said to me in quiet frustration: “Yato inhe pese chahiye, ya kisee aur, apna jaane ghar walon ko rakhna chahte hein (either they want money, or they want to hire their family members.)

Having seen several such cases of corruption and discrimination going nowhere for people who don’t have the “right connections”, I advised him take this up legally.

“Aap bas kanooni prakriya shuru kardijiye, ab bas kanoon hi hamko insaaf dila sakta hai (you just start the legal process, now only the Law can get us justice),” he said.

With Prabhat ji’s naivety serving as a catalyst to renew my own faith in justice for the marginalised in India and a little hope, we approached the Court of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities (CCPD), the authority tasked with overseeing the implementation of the RPwD Act. 

A formal complaint was filed but what followed was not an investigation or urgency but silence. Adarsh’s fight for justice exemplifies that our system bends rules for the powerful and weaponises definitions against the poor. Clear examples are people like Abhishek Singh and Pooja Khedkar who used fake disability certificates to qualify the prestigious UPSC examination. While the privileged can manipulate certificates to enter elite services, the vulnerable must beg to have theirs even acknowledged. 

Months passed, calls went unanswered, our strength to pursue the matter dwindled, echoing what most rights-based activists working in India already understand – justice for the marginalised is often hard-won and easily stalled.

When institutions designed to enforce disability rights such as the CCPD cannot respond to a textbook case of discrimination, it begs the question: Are rights-based laws, meant for the protection of vulnerable communities, simply decorative?

As a last-ditch effort, we approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), highlighting the CCPD’s inaction. 

Perhaps, if disability rights are framed as human rights and if this issue was seen as impacting all Deaf people, with Adarsh just being an example, the urgency would change?

It took nearly two years for the NHRC to seek an Action Taken Report (ATR) from the Ministry of Communication. Citing all our evidence as allegations, the NHRC asked for a report to be submitted within two weeks. 

The deadline for submission has lapsed, and we are yet to hear back on the ATR from the Ministry of Communication. We have taken the necessary steps and flagged the delay with the NHRC, hoping this does not become another case of justice delayed and consequently denied. 

It must be noted that it took nearly two years not to resolve the injustice, but merely to win an acknowledgement and seek a justification from the department.

Adarsh’s story isn’t about sympathy it’s about hierarchy. In public discourse, disability reservation is attacked as charity, as is evident from the disparaging comments made by IAS officer Smita Sabharwal. 

When discrimination is executed through files rather than force, it becomes harder to detect and easier to justify. Citizens like Adarsh become examples of how the system quietly exhausts those without power, connections or visibility. 

Over time, this lowers our collective expectation of fairness, so much so that when a powerful or privileged individual faces scrutiny, it is mistaken for proof that the system is “working normally.” 

The uncomfortable truth is that institutions are more invested in protecting themselves and their masters rather than protecting the vulnerable; we the people are mere bystanders and do not matter as long as we don’t start asking questions. 

But this realisation will never take place for most citizens, as most Indians want to live in a make-believe reality and not open their eyes to the truth written on the wall, which is perhaps the most disturbing part.

Shameer Rishad is the convenor of the Javed Abidi Foundation (JAF). He can be reached on X and Instagram @rishadshameer.

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