From policy promise to lived reality

Ten years after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016, India faces a simple question: have the promises of the law translated into the lived reality of the country’s 140–210 million persons with disabilities? The honest answer is: not nearly enough.

Last month, I participated in Purple Manthan 2026 at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, a closed-door policy dialogue organised in collaboration with the Association of People with Disability. Policymakers, academics, corporate leaders, practitioners, activists and persons with disabilities spent the day reflecting on the first decade of the RPwD Act and asking one uncomfortable question: what next?

What emerged from the discussions was strikingly consistent. As one participant put it, India does not suffer from a shortage of disability policy. It suffers from a culture that does not take compliance seriously. That distinction matters. Because if the problem were policy, the solution would be more policy. But we already have the policy. What we lack is the institutional will to enforce it.

Consider one data point raised during the discussions. It was noted that only around 100 companies have submitted their mandated Equal Opportunity Policies under the RPwD Act. This is not a minor technical lapse. It is a signal. If organisations cannot meet a basic documentation requirement, the gap between law and lived reality should surprise no one.

Accessibility compounds this problem further. Too often, it is treated as a checklist exercise: a ramp added to a building, a tactile strip placed on a floor, an accessible toilet somewhere on the premises. Organisations tick the boxes and move on. But a building can technically comply with accessibility norms and still remain unusable or unsafe for a person with disability. Compliance is not the same as access. True accessibility must be validated through lived experience, not superficial documentation.

The corporate sector presents the same paradox at scale. Over the past decade, many companies have made visible progress in hiring persons with disabilities. The numbers appear in sustainability reports. The stories appear in internal communications. But inclusion that begins and ends at recruitment is not inclusion — it is optics. The real test is what happens after hiring. Are workplaces physically accessible? Are digital systems designed for diverse users? Do employees with disabilities have mentors, growth pathways and a genuine shot at leadership? In most organisations, the answer remains no. Employees with disabilities are present in the headcount but largely absent from the rooms where decisions are made. The pipeline does not narrow by accident. It narrows because no one is held accountable for keeping it open.

The problem runs deeper still. Exclusion does not begin at the workplace. It begins in the classroom. A large proportion of children with disabilities never receive adequate foundational schooling. Estimates discussed during the Purple Manthan dialogue suggested that a majority of children with disabilities lack access to meaningful primary education, severely narrowing their path to higher education and employment. By the time professional opportunities emerge, the pipeline is already thin. Even in premier institutions, seats reserved for persons with disabilities often go unfilled — not because the talent does not exist, but because the system failed those students long before they reached the gate. Employment reform without education reform will not deliver meaningful inclusion. These are not separate agendas. They are one system.

Technology is often presented as the great equaliser, and it is true that assistive technologies, AI-powered tools and accessible digital platforms are expanding participation in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. The potential is real, but potential is not delivery. When organisations undergo formal accessibility audits, a consistent pattern emerges: digital interfaces fail basic screen reader compatibility; internal HR portals that employees use daily are inaccessible to the very people the organisation claims to include; procurement teams select enterprise software without a single accessibility criterion in the evaluation framework. These are not edge cases. They are the norm. Digital accessibility standards already exist. The gaps are not technical — they are a matter of institutional priority. Assistive technologies may be transformative, but they remain unaffordable or inaccessible to large sections of India’s disabled population. Technology is an enabler; without institutional intent behind it, it changes nothing.

This is, at its core, a cultural problem wearing structural clothing. For decades, disability in India has been framed primarily as a welfare issue — a matter of charity, sympathy or special provisions for a vulnerable group. Even well-intentioned initiatives sometimes reinforce this framing, positioning persons with disabilities as beneficiaries rather than professionals and equal participants in society. That framing must change. Disability inclusion is not benevolence. It is whether a citizen can study, work, travel and participate in society without facing barriers others rarely notice.

The RPwD Act gave India a strong legal foundation. The next decade must test whether that foundation holds. Governments must enforce accessible infrastructure and make non-compliance costly. Corporates must build workplaces and leadership pathways that are genuinely inclusive, not just visibly so. Civil society must continue to hold institutions accountable when they fall short. Inclusion will not arrive through goodwill alone. It requires systems, metrics and consequences. True inclusion will be realised when accessibility is no longer treated as a special provision — when it is simply the way institutions are built and the way they operate. That is the standard, and we are not there yet. But the next decade will reveal whether we mean what our laws say.

END OF ARTICLE