Understanding the work status and educational characteristics of disabled population in India

Archana Kujur, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

This paper examines prevalence of disability across major states of India and tries to understand how the different types of disability influences the educational and employment opportunities among disabled population in India using the National Sample Survey (NSS) 58th round (2002). Preliminary result indicates a large inter-state variation in the types of disability in India. Disability exists mostly among young (0-14) and elderly population. Illiteracy is higher among children with mental disability, blindness and speech disability. Interestingly, more than 75 percent disabled children have not attended pre-school intervention programmes and those who were enrolled to ordinary school have eventually discontinued due to disability. The major reasons for not enrolling in special schools are disability status, school not known and ‘parents not interested’. Among disabled, people challenged with mental retardation and locomotor disabilities have least work participation. Most of the people had to quit their jobs due to onset of disability.