In early April, the Law Commission of India submitted a draft law to stamp out discrimination against people afflicted with leprosy.
Indeed, nearly a decade after leprosy was “eliminated” in the country, there remain some laws that allow being afflicted with the infectious disease as grounds for divorce, firing and even refusing someone a train seat.
The World Health Organization defines elimination as having less than 1 new case per 10,000 people. In 2005, new cases in India plummeted from a high 57.6 in 1983 to just 0.95 in 2005. But this doesn’t mean the disease has been completely eradicated; more than 50 percent of the world’s new leprosy cases each year come from India.