This document summarizes disability statistics from India and discusses adopting the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework. It provides estimates of the number of disabled persons in India from different data sources and notes disabilities can include mental, physical, blindness, deafness, and locomotor impairments. It also shares experiences from field testing the ICF framework in India, noting challenges with question length, privacy, and literacy levels. Adopting consistent international disability definitions and redefining terms for Indian surveys and censuses is discussed.

1. Disability Statistics:India
5th Annual Meeting of Washington
Group
21-23 September,2005
Rio de Janeiro

2. Sources of Data
 Disability Survey of
National Sample
Survey,2002
Estimated number of
disabled persons :18.5
million
 Population
Census,2001
Number of disabled
persons : 21.9 million
Note: The number of disabled persons is about 2 % of
the total population of the country.

3. What is Disability?
Mental Disability
Mental Retardation,
Mental Illness
Physical Disability:
Blindness
Low Vision
Hearing Disability
Speech Disability
Locomotor Disability

4. Global Position: Disability Status
Country %
Population
With
Disability
Source
USA 20 US Census
Bureau Brief,
Disability
Status 2000
Japan 5 Ministry of
Health .Labor
&Welfare ,’99

5. Australia 15 ABS Survey
of Disability
UK 18 UK Census
Report,2001
Sri Lanka 5 Ministry of
Social Service

6. B’desh 10 Census Survey
Nepal 5 NSS

7. Major issue:Adoption of ICF
Under ICF, Disability serves as an umbrella term for:
Activity Limitation, and
Participation restriction or impairments
These are associated with Body Functions and Body
 Structure
Activity: Execution of a task or action by an
 individual
Participation: Involvement in life situations

8.  Body Functions are the physiological functions
including
 Psychological functions
 Body structures are anatomical parts of the body
such as organs, limbs and their components.
 There is a need to develop a set of definitions
for the census and surveys which are consistent
with the international definitions.

9. UNESCAP-WHO FIELD
TESTING SURVEY
•The field testing survey was conducted in one District
with 1000 schedules having been canvassed for test 1 ,i.e.,
sensitivity & specificity testing.
•Training of the investigators was absolutely necessary as
the investigators are usually conversant with the NSS surveys
& their mindset had to be reset for canvassing the ICF
framework schedule .
•This training was imparted by officers of CSO in the presence
of the consultant from ABS ,and representative of Ministry of
Social Justice and Empowerment & National Institute
of Hearing Handicapped.

10. Experiences From This Survey
 There were 68 questions in the schedule, it
was considered to be lengthy. The
respondents were not usually willing to give
adequate time for completing the schedule.
 There was a problem on the question
regarding the sexual activities specifically
when asked by a male interviewer to a
female respondent & vice-versa.

11. Experiences From This Survey
 There was a problem in asking this
question to the unmarried,widows/widowers
& separated persons.
 In the rural areas , the female respondents
tend to suggest to get the information from
their husbands.

12. Experiences From This Survey
 Most of the respondents were curious to
know why they were being interviewed.
 Majority of the respondents reacted, “I am
quite healthy. Why are you asking
unnecessary questions?”
 Literate respondents were cooperative
during the interview .

13. Experiences From This Survey
It was difficult to interview the illiterate &
semi-literate persons, most of time was
spent to make them understand the
questions.
 Female respondents were reluctant to
respond, they were insisting the presence of
male members.

14. Experiences From This Survey
 Retired persons were found to be very
cooperative during the interview.
 Persons who were not healthy (having
some kind of health problems) took interest
in responding to the questions.

15. The data collected through this field testing survey
for study 1 (specificity & sensitivity testing),study
2(test retest reliability) study 3( cognitive tests) have
been made available to WHO for analysis and
providing the results .
A technical advisory committee constituted by the
CSO is also currently engaged in suitably redefining
various disability terms so that these could be easily
understood by the interviewers & the informants in
NSS surveys & in the census.

16. Thank You!