I. Introduction: Locating the Vantage Point
Conversations on disability and employment in India are rarely short of intent. They are, however, persistently short of consequence. Policy documents, corporate diversity statements, and institutional reports repeatedly affirm the importance of including persons with disabilities in the workforce, yet the lived reality of employment remains fragile, episodic, and conditional.
This article proceeds from a specific vantage point: empirical and legal work emerging from the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) at NALSAR University of Law, including findings from the Finding Sizes for All (FSA) research. These findings do not claim to exhaust the field of disability and employment. Their value lies elsewhere. They reveal a recurring institutional orientation towards employment—one that treats inclusion as an achievement to be applauded, rather than a condition to be sustained.
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act), read together with India’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), establishes employment as a matter of enforceable equality. Yet, in practice, employment for persons with disabilities continues to operate as a conditional benefit—extended, withdrawn, and re-extended at the discretion of employers and administrators.
This article argues that disability inclusion in employment has increasingly become a site of institutional self-congratulation. Hiring is treated as proof of virtue; retention is rendered optional. The result is a system that celebrates entry while normalising exit.
II. The Legal Architecture: Employment Is Not Aspirational
It is necessary to begin with the legal baseline, because discussions on disability and employment often proceed as though inclusion were merely a matter of good practice, ethical commitment, or managerial benevolence.
The RPwD Act, 2016, marks a decisive shift in Indian disability law from a welfare-oriented framework to a rights-based regime grounded in equality and non-discrimination. Several features of the Act are directly relevant to employment.
First, the Act explicitly prohibits discrimination in employment, including discrimination arising from the denial of reasonable accommodation. Discrimination is defined broadly, capturing not only intentional exclusion but also practices and conditions that have the effect of disadvantaging persons with disabilities. This aligns with the UNCRPD’s emphasis on substantive equality rather than formal parity.
Second, reasonable accommodation is framed as a statutory obligation. It is not positioned as a discretionary managerial tool or a charitable adjustment. Failure to provide reasonable accommodation constitutes discrimination under the Act. The legal implication is clear: accommodation is a precondition for equality, not a concession.
Third, the RPwD Act situates employment within a broader framework of dignity, autonomy, and participation in society. Employment is not an isolated policy objective. It is a gateway right. Failure in employment cascades into failures in social protection, independent living, and community participation.
The UNCRPD reinforces this architecture. Article 27 recognises the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others, in a labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive, and accessible. States Parties are obligated not merely to promote employment but to safeguard the conditions under which employment can be sustained, including through reasonable accommodation and protection against discrimination.
Taken together, these instruments establish a clear proposition: employment for persons with disabilities is not aspirational. It is justiciable.
III. What the Evidence Shows: Employment as an Episodic Event
Despite this legal clarity, findings emerging from CDS research, including the Finding Sizes for All study, reveal a persistent and troubling pattern.
Employment interventions for persons with disabilities overwhelmingly prioritise entry. Skill development programmes, certification initiatives, placement drives, and recruitment targets dominate both public and private sector approaches. Entry into employment is treated as the primary marker of success.
What remains weakly addressed is continuity.
Retention, career progression, workplace adaptation, and long-term security are rarely embedded into programme design or institutional accountability. Monitoring mechanisms often end shortly after placement. Enforcement mechanisms rarely extend beyond initial hiring.
When employment relationships break down—due to inaccessible work environments, withdrawal of accommodation, or hostile organisational cultures—the system offers little recourse beyond informal negotiation or exit.
From a legal standpoint, this represents a fundamental misreading of equality. The right to employment under the RPwD Act is not a right to be hired once. It is a right to participate in work on an equal basis over time.
The episodic nature of employment has direct implications for social protection. When employment collapses, responsibility for financial and care support shifts back to families, often without formal recognition or support. Social protection thus becomes privatised, gendered, and uneven.
This is not a failure of individual resilience. It is a structural design flaw.
IV. Reasonable Accommodation: Law in Text, Discretion in Practice
Perhaps the clearest illustration of the gap between law and lived reality lies in the treatment of reasonable accommodation.
Legally, reasonable accommodation is mandatory. Operationally, it remains discretionary.
Findings from Finding Sizes for All indicate that accommodation is frequently negotiated on an individual basis, dependent on managerial goodwill, budgetary flexibility, or organisational culture. Accommodations may be provided temporarily, informally, or conditionally. They may be withdrawn when personnel change or when financial priorities shift.
This produces a legally perverse outcome: a statutory right whose enjoyment depends on institutional mood.
When accommodation is treated as an exception rather than infrastructure, the burden of adjustment shifts back onto the disabled worker. Individuals are expected to compensate for inaccessible systems through personal resilience, improvisation, or silence. The workplace itself remains unchanged.
From a doctrinal perspective, this undermines the very purpose of reasonable accommodation. Accommodation is not meant to reward deserving individuals. It is meant to internalise equality into organisational design.
V. Social Protection After Failure: A Backward Logic
Social protection frameworks for persons with disabilities in India continue to operate largely as post-failure compensation mechanisms. Pensions, allowances, and family-based support systems are activated after employment has failed or become impossible.
The CDS findings expose the limits of this model. When employment collapses due to lack of accommodation or a hostile work environment, social protection addresses income loss but not the structural exclusion that produced the loss.
This approach inverts the logic of rights-based inclusion. Instead of stabilising employment through proactive support, the system compensates individuals after exclusion has already occurred.
Legally and normatively, this is backwards.
Social protection ought to be attached to employment continuity. It should support accommodation costs, protect workers from attrition caused by structural design failures, and ensure predictability rather than churn.
When social protection is decoupled from employment stability, the State meets its formal obligations while outsourcing the consequences of failure to families and civil society.
VI. Community Inclusion at Work: Beyond Cultural Framing
Community inclusion is often discussed in cultural terms—belonging, attitudes, and sensitivity. While these dimensions matter, they are insufficient from a legal standpoint.
In employment, community inclusion is about equal participation without penalty.
If disabled employees remain concentrated in limited roles, excluded from advancement, or evaluated against norms they were never accommodated to meet, inclusion has failed regardless of intent.
The RPwD Act does not require disabled workers to be inspirational. The UNCRPD does not require gratitude. What the law requires is equality in participation and opportunity.
Community inclusion that only survives during diversity days, leadership speeches, or pilot projects is not genuine inclusion. It is performance.
VII. From Goodwill to Governance: Three Legal Thresholds
It is therefore necessary to move beyond recommendations framed as best practices and articulate clear legal thresholds.
First, employment must be treated as a continuing right, not a placement outcome. Monitoring, enforcement, and accountability must extend beyond entry into employment.
Second, reasonable accommodation must be operationalised as enforceable infrastructure. It cannot remain discretionary in practice while mandatory on paper.
Third, social protection should be tied to employment continuity rather than compensating for its collapse. Protection must stabilise work, not merely respond to its failure.
These are not new ideas. They are already implicit in Indian law and international obligation. What is missing is institutional seriousness.
VIII. Conclusion: When Inclusion Flatters Institutions
Employment for persons with disabilities in India increasingly functions as a moral performance. Institutions congratulate themselves for hiring while leaving underlying structures intact. Inclusion becomes a certificate of good conduct rather than a condition of justice.
Employment, in such a system, is not offered as a right. It is offered as a reward—for the employer’s good behaviour.
That framing explains why so many inclusion efforts fail to endure.
And it brings us to the final reckoning.
If dignity at work survives only on being good,
Then justice has failed—exactly where it should.
