Top Indian companies have very few people with disabilities on rolls

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

diverse workforce, India's top corporates have only three persons with disabilities ( PwD) for every 1,000 employees on rolls, an ET analysis showed. According to latest workforce data reported by Nifty 50 constituent companies as part of their annual disclosures, only five out of these 50 companies have more than 1% people with disabilities on their rolls, with four of them being public sector companies. To be sure, public sector companies are required to reserve 4% of all jobs for disabled people in compliance with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 — a target which all the analyzed companies fall short of.

Amongst the private sector companies, Titan has the highest share of disabled people on its rolls at 1%. ITC is a distant second at just under half a percent. Experts attribute the low representation of PwDs in corporate India to multiple reasons, starting from a small pool of candidates with required credentials and difficulties in mapping the available talent with vacancies, to companies being unable to provide accessibility and a welcoming work environment to disabled people.

Saptarshi Roy, former director, HR, NTPC, who spent close to four decades at the power major, said that there were multiple challenges that came in the way of public sector companies meeting the PwD quota. For one, the pool of PwD candidates was limited, he said. Then, there were legacy issues.

For years, public sector undertakings (PSU) like NTPC had large workforces with little representation of people with disabilities before the quota directive made it mandatory. So, even after meeting the quota in new recruitments, PSUs will take some time to meet this target, he said. «The nature of the job is also sometimes a deterrent.