The private sector will now be able to cumulatively employ 100,000 people with disabilities every year and be partly paid for it.
The cabinet today approved a package of incentives worth Rs 1,800 crore (Rs 18 billion) for three years for the private sector to encourage it to provide jobs for the disabled.
Thursday's announcement partially fulfils a provision in the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, offering the private sector incentives to reserve 5 per cent of jobs for this category of people.
The central scheme approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs provides for funds to pay the employers' share of the Employees Provident Fund and Employees State Insurance each year for the first three years.
The administrative charges of 1.1 per cent of the wages of employees covered under the EPF and Miscellaneous Provisions Act will continue to be paid by the employer.
The scheme stipulates that the salary of the beneficiaries should be less than Rs 25,000 a month. However, the package is not binding on industry.
The ministry of social justice and empowerment will make available an advance lump sum to the Employees Provident Fund Organisation and Employees State Insurance Corporation to adjust individual claims received from employers under the scheme. The amounts with the two organisations, initially Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million) ach, will be replenished periodically.
"This is a good beginning but the government could do a lot more," said Javed Abidi, an activist for the rights of disabled people.
He added that given that the government did not have binding targets, today's announcement was an acid test of whether industry could absorb 100,000 such jobs without a quota regime.
"Now if we find they have not employed 100,000 people in a year, they will have no excuse to give us," he said.
Added Amita Joseph, director of the Business and Community Foundation, "I don't see why the private sector would not grab the opportunity to employ people for whom it will have to pay less."
Industry has said that the incentives were good and should be sufficient warning for the private sector to mend its ways or expect mandatory targets.
Sujit Gupta, chairperson of the National Committee on Special Abilities in the Confederation of Indian Industry, said the industry should have been employing disabled people for its own good. "It is the most sustainable thing to do," he said.
The government, meanwhile, will be setting up a high-level committee to monitor the scheme. It will be co-chaired by the ministries of labour and social justice and include secretaries of the two ministries and the provident fund and state insurance commissioners.
