Measuring Disability in India

Disability status is often transitory or a matter of insidious change. A person’s ability to function properly depends to a considerable extent on her/his social and physical environment. One area that slips through the large-scale studies like the census and National Sample Survey is the impact of the state and the market on the lives of people with disabilities. There is a case for a more fundamental re-envisioning of the nature of the disability estimates. A recent article on disability estimates from the 2001 Census and the 2002 58th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) has concluded that “prevalence estimates in the census and the NSS are clearly not comparable...and it is unsure what aspects of disability are captured by the census and NSS current disability definitions” [Mitra and Sambamoorthi 2006: 4024]. Here we take this argument further: (1) to consider more reasons for caution in using either the census or the NSS for policy purposes; (2) to argue for more qualitative studies of disability; and (3) to consider the identification of disability not merely as a technical issue (does someone have or not have a particular impairment), but also as a political one (what claims are being made by or about someone if they say there is an impairment worthy of public attention).