By Shruti Pushkarna
When I left the TV newsroom for the disability space, I thought I was changing beats. I was actually changing worlds. In the newsroom, the day’s agenda was set by what was loud, fast and photogenic. In the disability space, I met barriers that had been sitting in plain sight for decades: the school that wouldn’t admit a child, the bank that couldn’t serve a blind customer, the office with only a staircase, the family told to keep their disabled member “at home, where it’s safe.” Mainstream media had never cared to look at any of it.
That discovery started my journey into awareness and advocacy, the two tools every journalist and every curious mind should feel drawn to. I assumed the work would be time-bound. Raise awareness, and the systems would follow.
Ten years after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (“RPwD Act 2016”), we are still asking for awareness. That deserves an honest question: why?
A law that was a leap, not a step
Its predecessor, the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, was a landmark for its time, but it was built on a welfare framework. It recognised seven disabilities. Many of its key provisions were hedged with “within the limits of economic capacity” and “wherever possible,” which made rights conditional on the state’s convenience. It said little about private establishments, and its enforcement machinery was weak.
The 2016 Act came out of a different world. India had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007, and the 1995 law was plainly out of step with it. The new Act:
- Expanded recognised disabilities from 7 to 21, including acid attack survivors, autism spectrum disorder, specific learning disabilities, dwarfism, muscular dystrophy, thalassemia, haemophilia and sickle cell disease, with power to add more.
- Moved to a rights-based framework built on non-discrimination, equality and dignity, and made reasonable accommodation an entitlement rather than a favour.
- Raised reservation in government jobs from 3% to 4%, and introduced 5% reservation in higher education for persons with benchmark disabilities.
- Set accessibility mandates for the built environment, transport, and information and communication technology, with timelines.
- Recognised legal capacity, introducing limited guardianship and supported decision-making, a real shift from treating disabled persons as objects of protection.
- Created enforcement mechanisms: Chief and State Commissioners with the powers of a civil court, designated Special Courts, and penalties for violations.
On paper, it is among the most progressive disability legislation in the world. That is what makes the last decade so hard to explain.
What has changed, and why it matters
It would be dishonest to say nothing has moved. People now arrive at the door of a grievance system already armed. They quote sections. They write “under the RPwD Act” at the top of their complaints, and it changes how the complaint is read. Parents know that inclusive education is a right, not a concession. Courts have repeatedly turned the Act’s promises into judgments, on reasonable accommodation, on the state’s duty to ensure accessibility, and, in the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Rajive Raturi, on the inadequacy of the government’s own accessibility rules. Commissioners’ offices, for all their limits, are now a route people know exists.
I have felt this change myself. At a popular Delhi mall, I once noticed large flower pots placed right in front of the entrance handrail, blocking it. Most people walk past such things without seeing them. But for someone who is blind, pregnant, injured or elderly, or for a child, a handrail is the difference between entering a building confidently and not entering at all. I raised it on social media, tagged the mall, and explained what accessibility means under the RPwD Act and why they were obliged to comply. The pots were removed, and that was the end of it.
A generation of disabled people has grown up believing the law is on their side. That belief is the foundation of every movement. But my mall story carries a caution. It worked because I happened to notice, knew the law, and had a platform to speak from. How many people walk into that entrance every day without any of those three things?
What has not
And yet the same stories keep arriving.
Public buildings, railway stations and transport systems remain inaccessible, years after the Act’s own deadlines lapsed. The Accessible India Campaign, launched in 2015, saw its targets extended again and again. Reserved posts remain vacant or are filled inconsistently, and “suitable candidate not found” has become an all-purpose answer. Digital India races ahead while websites, apps and KYC processes shut out blind users and others. Schools still turn children away, or admit them and offer nothing that helps them learn. Grievance redressal is slow, orders are often ignored without consequence, and the penalties meant to make compliance non-negotiable are rarely invoked.
Representation may be the starkest gap. There is no meaningful presence of disabled people in legislatures, in policy-making bodies, or in the senior ranks of the institutions meant to serve them. “Nothing about us without us” has been the movement’s slogan for decades, and it is still routinely honoured in the breach. Even our numbers are contested: the 2011 Census counted about 2.2% of the population as disabled, a figure global estimates and the community’s own experience suggest is a significant undercount. If we cannot count people, how do we plan for them?
A story from the screen
Some barriers can be fixed with a social media post. Others need a High Court. In Akshat Baldwa v. Yash Raj Films (March 2024), viewers with disabilities approached the Delhi High Court over the lack of subtitles and audio description in films, starting with Pathaan, despite a 2019 circular from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting asking for such features. Justice Prathiba M. Singh held that failing to provide accessibility features is an offence under the RPwD Act, and directed the Ministry to notify mandatory accessibility guidelines by a fixed date and to designate an officer to respond to accessibility requests within three working days.
It took a High Court bench to get a ministry to act on its own circular. That is a victory, and also a portrait of the decade.
Is it the law, or is it us?
So here is the question at the centre: is the problem the law and its poor execution, or something deeper?
The easy answer is that the law is fine and implementation is the failure. There is truth in that. Rules have been slow to arrive or diluted when they did. Enforcement bodies lack the resources, independence and teeth to compel compliance. Deadlines are extended without accountability, and nobody is answerable when a target is missed.
But I don’t think that goes far enough. Implementation fails where will is absent, and will is absent where a problem is not felt as one’s own. The mall’s flower pots were not malice. No one was thinking of the person who depends on that handrail, and that is the whole problem.
Disability is treated as somebody else’s story, a misfortune that happens to other families, a matter for charity or welfare rather than citizenship. Few of us like to think that disability can arrive in our own lives through an accident, an illness, a newborn, or simply the passage of years. A society that believes “this will never be me” has no urgency about building for people who aren’t “us.”
This is why apathy is not a footnote to the problem of enforcement. It is the problem. A law can prescribe a ramp, but it cannot make an engineer, an official or a builder feel that leaving it out is a failure. Only a change in how people see disabled citizens, as equal participants rather than recipients of sympathy, can do that.
Why awareness still matters
Which brings me back to my original question. Are we still talking about awareness because disability is not an interesting subject? I don’t believe so. Awareness, done well, is not about information. It is about making a problem personal. The right story can turn a statistic into a neighbour. The right question, asked in the right newsroom, can turn a statutory deadline into a headline.
That is where the media still has an enormous unpaid debt. Disability appears in the news mostly as inspiration, tragedy or a Paralympic medal. It rarely appears as what it usually is: governance, infrastructure, education, employment, healthcare and rights.
The next ten years
The RPwD Act does not need to be admired any further. It needs to be enforced, funded and owned. That means:
- Mandatory, enforceable accessibility standards with real consequences for non-compliance.
- Orders of the Chief Commissioner and State Commissioners translated into serious action, giving these authorities real teeth rather than leaving their directions to be politely ignored.
- Transparent public data on vacancies, compliance and complaints.
- Disabled people in the rooms where decisions are made, not consulted afterwards.
- A media that treats disability as a beat, not an occasional feature.
The last ten years proved that a strong law can change what people expect of the system. The next ten must prove that the system will rise to meet that expectation, without needing a viral post or a High Court petition every time.
Ten years is long enough for excuses to run out. The law has done its part, and now the rest of us have to do ours.
This article first appeared on: https://shruti-pushkarna.medium.com/ten-years-of-the-rpwd-act-a-powerful-law-a-persistent-apathy-ed6378ea63e9