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The Hindu
25-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
2,260 special educator posts to be filled; recruitment notification awaited
Special education teachers across Andhra Pradesh are eagerly waiting for the release of the official recruitment notification, following the State government's recent announcement that 2,260 special education teacher posts would be filled. The recruitment drive follows a recent Supreme Court directive asking all States to bring out notifications about the number of posts they have sanctioned for teachers who would impart education to Children with Special Needs (CwSN). As per the guidelines established by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), the School Education Department in Andhra Pradesh is all set to recruit special educators in the proposed ratio of 1:10 for the elementary level and 1:15 for the secondary level in nine out of the total 21 categories of disabilities. RCI works under the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and its primary objective is to promote education, rehabilitation, and employment of people with disabilities. Out of 21 disabilities, currently RCI has standard training programmes in nine categories that include blindness, low vision, hearing impairment (deaf and hard of hearing), intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, specific learning disabilities, speech and language disability, and multiple disabilities, including deaf-blindness. According to the UDISE (Unified District Information System for Education) data for the academic year 2023-24 shows that there are 41,119 children with special needs categorised under nine different disabilities in government and government-aided schools in Andhra Pradesh. Of them, 11,360 are in 7,092 primary schools (Grades 1 to 5), which include institutions with less than 10 enrolled students. 'To maintain an optimal teacher-pupil ratio of 1:10 for these students, a total of 1,136 special educators are required,' said Samagra Shiksha State Project Director B. Srinivasa Rao. Similarly, there are 29,759 CwSN studying in 6,693 secondary schools, and as many as 1,984 inclusive education resource persons are needed to be recruited, as per the RCI's teacher-pupil ratio of 1:15, said Mr. Srinivasa Rao. Senior advisor to the Department of School Education on Inclusive Education Ramkamal says that the ultimate aim of the ongoing efforts is to blur the line between mainstream and special schools, ensuring children with disabilities are not segregated but included within the general education system. 'The State aspires to become a national model for inclusive education where every child, regardless of physical, intellectual, or learning challenges, receives equitable, quality education in a supportive environment.' Delay causing anxiety Members of the Andhra Pradesh Unemployed Special Teachers Federation, meanwhile, have expressed worry over the delay in the issue of notification for their recruitment. Pointing to several other states that have notified the recruitment process, they urged the State authorities to follow suit. Citing the data available with the Central government pertaining to the number of State-wise qualified special educators in 2021. They point out that Andhra Pradesh had 8,101 special teachers. 'Many more special teachers would have qualified in the last three-and-a-half years. We want the government to ensure justice for all,' said a federation leader.
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Where are India's disabled leaders? A C-suite reckoning long overdue introduction
If somebody writes an epitaph to Sangita, it should be headlined 'Happy Soul'. Nothing fazes her. No challenge is too big. A fan of James Bond's 'never say die' spirit, just like him she thrives on adrenalin rush as she fields every curveball life throws her way. Sangita is a person with multiple disabilities. A patient of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), Sangita is a wheelchair user and hearing aids user. For the past 10 years, she has been whizzing past life in a wheelchair, notching professional milestones. She believes nothing is insurmountable, certainly not limitations imposed by disabilities. Sangita has three decades of experience in the media, content and communications industry across verticals and industries. She has been associated with the development and disability sector and featured in the first Directory of Development Journalists in India published by the PII. She has also functioned as a media representative of the Rehabilitation Council of India and has conducted various S&A programmes for bureaucrats. Sangita is the founder of Ashtavakra Accessibility Solutions Private Limited, a social enterprise dedicated to the inclusion of the disabled. LESS ... MORE For all the talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in India Inc., one group remains almost entirely absent from the corridors of power: persons with disabilities. While companies boast of gender ratios and ESG commitments, the question of disability—especially at leadership levels—is barely whispered. This silence is not just an oversight. It is a glaring indicator of how inclusion efforts have sidelined over 26 million citizens. This two-part article examines why, despite visible activism, legal mandates, and global initiatives like the Valuable 500, disabled professionals remain on the margins of corporate leadership—and what must be done to change that. (Continued from PART I) Is There PwD Talent Shortage? The shortage of persons with disabilities (PwDs) in senior corporate roles is not a talent issue—it is a systems failure. Research from the Disability Rights India Foundation (2022) and global benchmarks like the Disability Equality Index consistently show that even when companies commit to inclusive hiring, few go on to create sustainable career pathways for PwDs beyond entry-level roles. A 2023 report by EY and the Valuable 500 found that while 7% of global C-suite leaders identify as disabled, 80% of them have never disclosed their disability at work—pointing to the persistent stigma and fear of professional penalty. In India, the situation is even more opaque: most companies don't publicly disclose disability data, and those that do report PwD representation figures hovering well below 1% at leadership levels. Moreover, internal mobility and succession planning frameworks rarely include disability as a dimension of diversity. A 2022 analysis of Indian corporate ESG reports found that fewer than 10% mentioned disability in their boardroom or leadership pipelines. Meanwhile, PwDs remain underrepresented in mid-career mentoring programs, sponsorship schemes, and high-potential talent pools. The result? A broken pipeline. Discriminatory hiring at entry levels chokes off access to growth opportunities, and lack of visibility in leadership reinforces a cycle of exclusion. Unless organizations re-engineer their cultures to nurture and promote PwD talent systematically, we will continue to see a vacuum at the top. To summarize the critical gaps in PwD talent promotion: Scarcity in Senior Leadership: Ongoing discrimination limits PwDs' opportunities to advance into higher management and executive roles. Career Progression Barriers: PwDs face persistent biases and lack transparent, inclusive career advancement paths. Educational Inequity: Limited inclusive educational opportunities significantly restrict the pool of qualified PwD candidates. Inconsistent Accountability: Many organizations still lack concrete disability inclusion metrics and accountability at senior levels. Can We Course Correct? Identifying the barriers is only the first step. True transformation lies in converting that insight into systemic, measurable, and sustained action. Based on global best practices and emerging data from leading disability-inclusive organizations, the following interventions offer a roadmap for Indian corporates serious about bridging the disability leadership gap: Mandatory Accountability and Transparent Reporting: Companies must disclose disability representation data across levels—entry, mid, and leadership—in their annual ESG or DEI reports. Globally, firms like Microsoft and EY publish detailed data that helps drive internal change. Yet in India, fewer than 10% of companies mention disability in their leadership disclosures (Deloitte ESG Survey, 2022). Inclusive Education and Talent Pipelines: Support and fund programs that improve access to higher education for PwDs. Only 5% of Indian PwDs currently pursue higher education (Ministry of Education, 2022), limiting their entry into the formal corporate talent pool. Corporates should partner with skilling platforms and inclusive universities to source candidates and mentor them for long-term leadership tracks. Anti-Discrimination Reforms in Hiring: Create standardized guidelines to ensure disability-neutral recruitment practices across campuses and lateral hiring. PwD graduates from elite institutions like IITs and IIMs report lower interview calls and longer job search cycles despite comparable qualifications (IIM-A Campus Report, 2022). Executive Sponsorship and Internal Career Mobility: Assign senior leaders to mentor high-potential PwD employees. At Accenture and Microsoft, executive champions play a visible role in sponsorship and growth planning. This must be institutionalized in Indian corporates, backed by KPIs for leadership development of PwDs. Public Recognition and Role Modelling: Launch or support national awards that recognize corporate leaders and entrepreneurs with disabilities. Representation drives aspiration. Forbes, for example, has featured only a handful of Indian PwD founders in its 30 Under 30 lists over the last decade. India Inc. must push for greater visibility of success stories from the disability sector. Benchmarking and Standardization: India lacks a Disability Equality Index equivalent. Creating a national benchmarking framework to rate companies on accessibility, hiring, leadership inclusion, and retention of PwDs will drive industry-wide accountability. A Valuable 500-style Indian platform could be institutionalized via industry associations like CII or NASSCOM. Each of these solutions draws from global evidence and adapts them for Indian realities. The objective is not to tick boxes, but to build a corporate ecosystem where persons with disabilities are recruited with dignity, retained with purpose, and risen with power. Corporate India must move beyond symbolic gestures towards meaningful action. The Valuable 500 offers a bold and urgent framework—but it is only as effective as the action it inspires. Boards must ask hard questions. CEOs must commit to tracking and disclosing disability metrics just as they do gender or ESG goals. And most critically, HR, DEI, and leadership development programs must work together to identify, nurture, and elevate disabled talent. The path forward demands intentionality: investing in accessible education pipelines, disrupting hiring biases, and embedding disability into every layer of leadership strategy. Let this not be another performative pledge. Let it be the beginning of a reckoning. It's time to stop asking where the disabled leaders are—and start building the systems that ensure they rise. That's the real test of whether Corporate India is ready to lead inclusively. References: Secondary Research Disability Equality Index 2023 Report – Disability:IN. Ministry of Education, India – Equitable and Inclusive Education. Disability Rights India Foundation Report (2022). IIM Ahmedabad Placement Outcomes: Discrimination Evidence – JSTOR. Valuable 500 – Official Pledge and Global Strategy. Microsoft Diversity & Inclusion Report. EY US Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Report (2022). Accenture Disability Inclusion Initiatives. SAP Autism at Work Program. Unilever Diversity & Inclusion Strategy. MyCIL Analysis of Disability Inclusion Trends. JSA Law: Disability Inclusion in Indian Workplaces. RoboBionics Blog on Disability Rights in Workplaces. Accessible India Campaign – DEPwD. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
19-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Where are India's disabled leaders? A C-suite reckoning long overdue
If somebody writes an epitaph to Sangita, it should be headlined 'Happy Soul'. Nothing fazes her. No challenge is too big. A fan of James Bond's 'never say die' spirit, just like him she thrives on adrenalin rush as she fields every curveball life throws her way. Sangita is a person with multiple disabilities. A patient of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), Sangita is a wheelchair user and hearing aids user. For the past 10 years, she has been whizzing past life in a wheelchair, notching professional milestones. She believes nothing is insurmountable, certainly not limitations imposed by disabilities. Sangita has three decades of experience in the media, content and communications industry across verticals and industries. She has been associated with the development and disability sector and featured in the first Directory of Development Journalists in India published by the PII. She has also functioned as a media representative of the Rehabilitation Council of India and has conducted various S&A programmes for bureaucrats. Sangita is the founder of Ashtavakra Accessibility Solutions Private Limited, a social enterprise dedicated to the inclusion of the disabled. LESS ... MORE Introduction For all the talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in India Inc., one group remains almost entirely absent from the corridors of power: persons with disabilities. While companies boast of gender ratios and ESG commitments, the question of disability—especially at leadership levels—is barely whispered. This silence is not just an oversight. It is a glaring indicator of how inclusion efforts have sidelined over 26 million citizens. This two-part article examines why, despite visible activism, legal mandates, and global initiatives like the Valuable 500, disabled professionals remain on the margins of corporate leadership—and what must be done to change that. In over 25 years across five different organizations, countless corporate visits, and high-profile conferences, I have seldom encountered another person with a disability (PwD) at my side. Where are the PwD leaders of corporate India? A closer look at Forbes and other startup rankings over the past five years reveals a stark underrepresentation of disabled professionals. While exceptional individuals like Srikanth Bolla (Bollant Industries), Hunny Bhagchandani (Torchit), Alina Alam (MITTI Café), and Devika Malik (Wheeling Happiness) have featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 and social entrepreneurship circles, they remain outliers—not proof of systemic inclusion. Of these, Hunny and Alina do not identify as people with disabilities, although they have done tremendous work for the inclusion of the disabled. Why are disabled professionals so rarely seen in C-suites, leadership summits, or business awards? Why, even after graduating from premier institutions like IITs and IIMs, do they struggle for placements and recognition? Despite India's vibrant corporate landscape and participation in global initiatives, the disabled workforce remains invisible in lists like Best CEOs, promising founders, or startup success stories. Globally, fewer than 1% of senior executives identify as disabled (Disability Equality Index, 2023), and in India, the number is even lower. Is this scarcity a reflection of capability—or of systemic exclusion? Are there truly no qualified PwD leaders, or are our systems simply not built to see them? These are the urgent questions we must ask if we are to measure the real impact of initiatives like the Valuable 500. Because without intentional disruption, the silence around disabled leadership will persist—normalized by its invisibility. Why we need more initiatives like the valuable 500 Despite comprising nearly 15% of the world's population, people with disabilities (PwDs) occupy less than 1% of senior corporate roles globally—a stark disparity that reflects decades of systemic exclusion. In 2019, recognizing this urgent gap, Caroline Casey launched the Valuable 500 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This global initiative set out with a bold goal: to get 500 of the world's most influential CEOs to commit to placing disability inclusion on their business leadership agendas. Before the launch of the Valuable 500, disability inclusion was largely invisible in corporate diversity narratives. While conversations around gender, race, and LGBTQ+ rights gained prominence, disability remained an afterthought. Valuable 500 broke through that silence by demanding that inclusion extend to all identities—not just the visible or the socially prioritized. The core aim was to move companies away from charity-based approaches to a rights-based, systemic strategy—where access, leadership, and opportunity for PwDs were seen as integral to business performance and innovation. Since then, companies like Microsoft, Accenture, SAP, EY, and Unilever—leaders among the Valuable 500—have introduced targeted hiring initiatives and begun to disclose disability representation data. For instance, Microsoft reports that 5.7% of its global workforce self-identifies as disabled, and has launched Autism Hiring and Supported Employment programs. EY's disability self-identification rates in the U.S. increased from 2.3% in 2020 to 3.9% in 2022, while Unilever has publicly committed to ensuring 5% of its workforce comprises persons with disabilities by 2025. SAP, through its Autism at Work program, has hired hundreds of neurodiverse individuals, and Accenture has embedded disability advocacy into leadership goals across its global offices. These numbers show progress—but also reveal the limitations. Most companies still report less than 1% disability representation in senior roles, and only a handful of top executives or board members publicly identify as disabled. Even at Microsoft and EY—among the more transparent firms—C-suite disclosure remains the exception, not the norm. This is why we need not just one—but many more initiatives like the Valuable 500. We need frameworks that are not just global, but tailored to local realities. We need Indian industry chambers, investor groups, and leadership academies to recognize that disability inclusion is not a CSR line item—it's a measure of integrity, innovation, and equity. Because true leadership is not about who climbs fastest. It's about who makes sure others can climb too. Evaluating global progress Since its inception, companies like Microsoft, Accenture, and SAP, part of the Valuable 500, have implemented inclusive recruitment strategies, developed accessible technologies, and created accountability frameworks for leaders. These actions have significantly enhanced the visibility and hiring of PwDs within their organizations. However, representation at the C-suite level remains extremely limited. According to the Disability Equality Index (2023), fewer than 1% of senior executives globally openly identify as disabled, underscoring the deep-rooted exclusion that persists. Indian scenario and challenges India, despite being home to over 26 million PwDs (Census of India, 2011), continues to face systemic and cultural challenges in mainstreaming disability inclusion within corporate structures. While companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Mahindra have signed the Valuable 500 pledge and initiated hiring programs for PwDs, most placements are confined to junior or entry-level roles. According to a 2022 report by the Disability Rights India Foundation, fewer than 0.5% of corporate leaders in India openly identify as disabled—indicating a glaring exclusion from decision-making echelons. One of the fundamental causes behind this leadership vacuum is the lack of inclusive and accessible education. As per the Ministry of Education (2022), only 5% of PwDs in India are able to access higher education. Many government and private educational institutions still lack basic physical and digital accessibility, and inclusive pedagogy remains sporadic. Moreover, mainstream skilling programs under the Skill India initiative report minimal enrolment of PwDs due to a lack of targeted outreach, accessible curriculum, and poor industry linkage. Even those who make it to elite institutions face significant hiring discrimination. Internal reports and student feedback from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) suggest that PwD graduates routinely receive fewer interview calls, face biased perceptions about productivity, and experience marginalisation during placements—despite having competitive academic records. Companies often avoid disclosing data on how many PwDs they hire, let alone how many progress through the ranks. Only a handful of Indian corporates include disability in their ESG or DEI reports, with even fewer offering disaggregated data on hiring or promotions of PwD employees. Furthermore, there is no national benchmarking equivalent to the Disability Equality Index in India. In the absence of a credible accountability mechanism, disability inclusion becomes more rhetoric than practice. Many corporates continue to treat accessibility as a compliance burden rather than a leadership imperative. The opportunity is immense India's expanding knowledge economy and growing digital workforce offer potential for inclusive hiring—if designed intentionally. But to unlock that potential, there must be urgent reforms in corporate reporting standards, inclusive recruitment, and workplace culture that welcomes and retains disabled professionals beyond tokenism. (Continued in Part II) Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
