May the disabled be counted in this census

2001 Census claimed only 2.1% of India’s population has some disability; activist groups say this is a gross underestimate.

India’s decennial Census is one of the largest such exercises anywhere in the world. Apart from the sheer size of the head count, the Census is also acclaimed as one of the most accurate.

But voluntary groups working with handicapped people say that it has not been so precise in estimating the number of disabled people in the country. The 2001 Census was the first to count the country’s handicapped. It estimated that 2.1% of the country’s population had some kind of disability. Voluntary groups working with the handicapped find this figure a gross underestimate.

When the percentages of the disabled in countries at levels of development similar to India’s are compared, our Census seems to have under-counted the disabled. Groups like the National Association for the Blind (NAB) say that the figure is 6% in China, 7% in Sri Lanka and 4.5% in Nepal. The World Health Organisation (WHO), too, estimates that in any population, one in 10 persons has some kind of physical or mental handicap.

“This means that we could have left more than half of our disabled countrymen out of the count,” says Suhas Karnik, the NAB’s honourary secretary. Groups like the NAB are now campaigning to ensure that this Census gets the right count of the country’s handicapped. The right figures are needed, they say, for the government to form policies and schemes for the disabled.

While one problem in the last Census was that enumerators did not ask families about handicapped members at home. The other was that the question was relegated to the back of the Census paper — at number 15 in the 33-question form. This time, after representations from voluntary groups, the question has moved to number 8. A third reason for the under-count was that enumerators were not trained to recognise disabilities. The families of the handicapped were also responsible for the underreporting.

“In rural areas, especially, a disability is looked at as a stigma. Handicapped members are often hidden away from society and enumerators. This happens in cities too,” said Karnik.

The last Census enumerated five disabilities, including related to hearing, sight, speech and locomotion. This time, three new categories have been added, including separate entries for mental retardation and mental illness. Another new question in the category covers problems like autism, multiple sclerosis and thalassemia.

Census officials in Mumbai agree that there could have been an under-count but deny that it was as high as 50%. “But this time, we have trained our enumerators to identity and count the disabled. Families have also been told not to hide their disabled members,” said a senior official.