8.3% Indian households have disabled persons, according to survey

Thursday July 02, 2015 , 2 min Read

As many as 2.08 crore households in the country have differently-abled persons constituting 8.3 per cent of the total homes, the 2001-11 Census data recently said. According to the 2011 data released by Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, out of the total households having disabled persons, about 99 per cent homes are normal homes, 0.4 per cent are institutional and 0.2 per cent are house-less households.

The data on disabled population was recently released by types of disability, households and gender. The differently-abled living in different types of households are further cross-classified into eight different disabilities i.e. seeing, hearing, speech, movement, mental retardation, mental illness, multiple disability for India, States and Union Territories, according to PTI.

Total households having disabled persons has shown an increase of 20.5 lakhs, from 187.3 lakhs in 2001 to 207.8 lakhs in 2011. Of these, 6.2 lakhs are in rural and 14.3 lakhs in urban areas. The differently-abled in normal households increased by 48,19,382, institutional households by 65,895 and house-less households by 22,948 between 2001-11, the data said.

Meanwhile, normal households increased by 2,02,4495, institutional households by 8,370 and house-less households by 13,560 during the time, it added. According to the Census of India, a group of unrelated persons who live in an institution and take their meals from a common kitchen is called an ‘institutional household’. ‘House less households’ are those households who do not live in buildings or census houses but live in the open on roadside, pavements etc.

Census data from 2001 revealed that over 21 million people in India as suffering from one or the other kind of disability. This was equivalent to 2.1% of the population. Among the total disabled in the country, 12.6 million were males and 9.3 million were females. The number of disabled is more in rural and urban areas.

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