``Isn't it time the government went in for an accurate, fresh estimate of the number of disabled in the country, especially at a time when they are actually going in for a national exercise in the 2001 census?'' asks Javed Abidi, convenor of the Disabled Rights Group and executive director of the National Council for Employment of Disabled People.

There appears to be no justification for an either/or approach while collecting data on issues regarding disabilities, says Abidi. The mandate of the population census, held every 10 years, is to count the number of persons with disabilities in the entire population and by virtue of this fact, reduce statistical errors to zero. But in the 2001 census, this won't be the case. In fact, India has not had a census for the disabled for 20 years now. ``All we wanted was inclusion of two questions related to disability in the questionnaire. But it was flatly refused,'' says Abidi.

Elaborating on his demand, Abidi says, ``It is generally the head of the family who talks to the enumerators conducting the census. All they need to ask them is two questions: Is there a disabled person in your family? If the answer is yes, they will ask them what kind of disability the person suffers from,'' he says.

But Jayanta Kumar Banthia, registrar general and census commissioner, says that a majority of the Indian population does not either know what disability is or is reluctant to talk about disabled members in the family. ``The first and fundamental purpose of a census is to ascertain the size of the population and its distribution. Because of the enormity of the exercise (the Indian census is the biggest in the world), there are problems in offering too detailed a questionnaire,'' he says.

Also, as Banthia points out, the exercise is conducted by part-time enumerators, who have to complete it in a mere 20 days. ``Sensitising lakhs of enumerators across the country about disability and then training them about it was not possible for us. By comparison, the National Sample Survey is a much more comprehensive exercise. And it has been the fountainhead of all planning in the past decade,'' he says.

Counting the number of disabled people in a census has always been a tricky issue. In fact, it was dropped in the years 1941, 1951, 1961 and 1971. ``It was after pressure from the ministry of social justice that it was included again in 1981, and also because 1981 was declared as the International Year for Disabled People by the United Nations,'' says Banthia.

But Abidi insists that in the absence of a definite figure for disability in the country, policy planners are groping in the dark. ``This leads to a lopsided allocation of funds against the disability sector. Although there is a massive budget for the ministry of welfare, what the disabled get is very little,'' says Abidi.

Elaborating on this, he says, ``The budget for the ministry of welfare ranges from Rs 3,000-4,000 crore. A major chunk of it goes in schemes for the upliftment of the backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. After all that, some funds come to the disability sector,'' he says.Banthia does not agree. ``It is an exaggeration to say that the policy makers do not have an estimate for planning. After all, it is in the 1990s that the Disability Act and several other pieces of legislation helping the physically challenged have been passed,'' he points out.

The last time the ministry undertook a census that included the disabled, it cut a sorry figure. Considering just totally crippled, totally blind and totally deaf persons as disabled, it missed out on the partially disabled and people with mental impairments. ``There are better and more accurate measures for it. There should be an update on the NSS for the disabled population. Or, the studies of the Indian Council of Medical Research should be the basis for planners. Including them in the census will be doing a disservice to the physically challenged. I don't want to be a part of it,'' says Banthia.

Defining disability
The 1981 census took into account only three categories of disability-the totally crippled, the totally deaf and the totally blind. But the National Sample Survey has a wider definition and it looks at visual disability, hearing disability, speech disability and locomotor disability. The Disability Act, 1991, has the most comprehensive definition of disability in that it includes the partially disabled, patients cured of leprosy and those with mental disorders.