As per an analysis of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)-mandated Business Responsibility and Sustainability reports filed by 1,062 listed companies for 2022/2022-23, more than 87% of them said their workplaces were accessible to people with disabilities. However, only 0.6% of permanent workers they employed were PwDs.
Data compiled for ET by primeinfobase.com showed that 38,989 of the 6.43 million permanent employees at these companies in 2022/2022-23 were PwDs. Around 45% of the companies didn’t have a single PwD employee; 146 companies had just one.
While many Indian companies have been making strides on the gender diversity front, experts said there are multiple reasons why the needle has barely moved on PwD representation. These include lack of proper accessibility, attitudinal barriers and a limited pool of candidates with the right qualifications who can be deployed immediately.
“Companies don’t want to invest in skilling, training, etc., they want quick fixes and therein lies a problem,” said Vineet Saraiwala, founder of Atypical Advantage, an inclusive livelihood platform which claims to have helped place more than 1,000 PwDs across 100 companies in the last three years. “A lot of PwDs don’t have the necessary educational background. Companies need to be more patient and take a longer-term approach: invest in training and hiring or hiring and training.”
Proper infrastructure is another issue, said Saraiwala, an IIM-Bangalore alumnus, who is blind himself. “Just creating ramps isn’t enough. When we say accessibility, it should be both physical and digital. If your internal systems are not accessible, for instance, there is no screen-reader software, then you’re ruling out a large chunk of PwDs who are visually challenged,” he said.Pallavi Pareek, chief executive of Ungender, a DEI technology firm that advises companies on improving their diversity quotient, said the poor PwD representation is as much about the mindset.“Infrastructure is easy to achieve and claim when it comes to readiness. It is the mindset and culture of bringing people in which is ambiguous and extremely difficult to achieve. So, while on paper many companies will pass the audit; in the experience test, they won’t,” Pareek said.
No recent statistics are available on PwD numbers. But a 2021 government report, citing the 2011 Census data, put the number of differently abled population at 26.8 million, or 2.21% of the then population. Of the disabled population, 62% men and 55% women were literate, as per the report: Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) in India – A Statistical Profile: 2021.
A bunch of companies have been trying to hire more PwDs through measures including tie-ups for hiring, making workplaces more accessible, providing them with leadership opportunities, mentoring, etc. Public sector companies, which are required to reserve 4% of all jobs for PwDs, run special recruitment drives.
Not surprisingly, public sector organisations employ the highest number of PwDs – though all fall short of the target. According to Prime Database data, State Bank of India had the highest number of PwDs in 2022-23 at 5,141 (2.2% of headcount), followed by Punjab National Bank at 2,795 (2.68%).
In the private sector, Infosys had the highest number of people with disabilities in FY23 at 1,357 (0.4%), while Tata Consultancy Services had 953 (0.16%).
Pranav Haldea, managing director of the Prime Database Group, said as far as diversity is concerned, India Inc’s focus has been on gender diversity, that too driven primarily by regulatory requirements.
“Increasing representation of differently abled employees in the workforce will take time. However, I hope that there will now be greater scrutiny and pressure on companies with this data now being mandated to be disclosed.”
