New Delhi: Education is the key for empowering and bringing Persons with Disabilities (PwD) into the mainstream. Surprisingly, out of the 65.7 lakh disabled population in age-group 5-19 at Census 2011 in India, 17.5 lakh (26.7%) never attended any educational institutions. However, on an overall enrollment in educational institutes, there are improvements.
As per Census 2011, 40.2 lakh (61.2%) are attending educational institutions, 8.0 lakh (12.1%) attended educational institutions earlier. In 2001, about 33.0 lakh (50.5%) out of 65.3 lakh disabled persons in the same age group reported attending educational institutions. Hence, there is an improvement of about 11 percentage points in the status of attending educational institutions by disabled persons in the age-group 5-19 during the decade 2001-2011.
Further, out of 40.2 lakh disabled persons attending educational institutions, 22.8 lakh (56.7%) are males and 17.4 lakh (43.3%) are females.
The Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India (RGI) informed in a press statement that disabled persons with Any other disability shows the highest percentage (71.2%) in attending educational institution followed by Seeing (68.0%), Hearing (67.0%), Movement (59.6%), Speech (58.9%), Mental retardation (47.2%), Multiple disability (37.2%) and least with Mental illness (34.1%).
Maximum percentage of disabled persons who attended educational institution earlier is seen in Movement (17.7%) followed by Mental illness (15.5%), and least in Multiple disability (8.4%). The proportion of disabled persons, who never attended any educational institution in 2011 was found to be highest among persons with Multiple disability (54.4%), followed by Mental illness (50.3%) and Mental retardation (41.2%) whereas persons with Any other disability (17.7%) show the least percentage.
As per Census RGI, the table C-22 gives distribution of the disabled population in the age-group 5-19 by their attendance status in educational institution, type of disability, age, sex and residence for India, State/UT and Cities. All round efforts are need of the hour to uplift and empower this marginalized section of the society.
