Disability Statistics, Data and Facts in India [Infographic]

Have you ever wondered how many persons with disability are there in India? What is the status of disabled people in India vis-à-vis education, employment, marriage, healthcare etc.? India carries out the Census every ten years. The last Census was conducted in the year 2011. This exercise provided comprehensive data on the state of disability in India. But all this data is big in amount and it needs to be analyzed to draw facts out of it. So, we decided to prepare and publish an infographic on this topic. An infographic serves as a visual means to convey concise information.

This information is primarily based on the Census of India. We have used some other sources as well and all these sources are mentioned in the infographic.

Infographic in Disability Statistics in India

Title: Disability Statistics in India
Date produced: 24 October 2017
Produced by: WeCapable.com
Designed by: Lalit Kumar
License: Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA) Feel free to use this infographic (please provide a link to www.wecapable.com)

You can easily display this infographic in your website / blog by using the following code:

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Disability Facts in India

Following facts have been drawn from Census 2011. For more data, see our article on disabled population in India.

• 2.21% of total population in India has disability.
  • 2.41% of male population of India is disabled
  • 2.01% of female population in India is disabled
• Overall there are 2 crore 68 lakh persons with disability.
• More than 41% persons with disabilities in India never get married! This has a direct connection with the cliches associated with disability.
• Locomotor and multiple disabilities are more commonly found in rural areas of India.
• Speech and hearing impairment are found to be more prevalent among the urban population of India.
• Only 36.3% of the disabled population (which turns out to be about 98 lakhs) are employed.
  • Of these, about 71 lakh are men and 27 lakh are women
• Literacy rate among women with disabilities is merely 45% whereas the overall women literacy rate in India is 65%.
• Literacy rate of men with disabilities is 62%.
• 27% of Indian people with no disability are illiterate. This figure goes up to 57% in case of people with intellectual disability.
• 44% of Indian people with no disability are unemployed. In contrast, 72% of people with intellectual disability remain unemployed.
• Only 8.5% disabled people in India acquire a graduate degree.
• It is estimated that the number of unemployed persons with disabilities will cross 10 million by 2022 if appropriate skills are not imparted through training programs.
• Ignoring the potential of disabled people can cost any nation very high. In case of India, leaving persons with disabilities out of economy translates into a loss of about 5-7% of GDP.
• It is interesting to note that according to WHO’s 2013 report; around 15% of world’s population has some type of disability. In contrast, India’s figure of 2.21% indicates that India’s definition of disability is leaving  lot of person with disabilities out of its ambit. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 has recognized more conditions as disabilities. So, we can hope that the Census of India 2021 will provide more accurate data on disabled people in India.

We hope that these facts related with disability in India are useful for you. As we said earlier, you can embed the above infographic easily in your website or blog. The code is given above. Feel free to provide us with more information in the comments section. Thank you for using WeCapable.