Government shelves socio-economic data of Persons with Disabilities as disability database goes online

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is justifying the move by questioning the “quality” of the socio-economic data collected.

The Union government is shelving whatever socio-economic data it had collected, while registering about 94 lakh Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) across the country for Unique Disability ID (UDID) cards in the last six years, The Hindu has learnt. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is justifying the move by questioning the “quality” of the socio-economic data collected.

The data being shelved includes information like socio-economic category (caste), level of education, employment status, income (personal and family) and marital status of PwDs, with officials saying the focus of the form was always to collect disability data and hence all these fields were made optional. Consequently, many skipped them.

Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) of the Social Justice Ministry said, “The data are not being released because of quality issues.” When asked if the department intends to pursue collecting socio-economic data for future UDID registrations, Mr. Aggarwal said, “The basic purpose of the form is to get a disability certificate… and also, we cannot afford to make the form too lengthy by seeking information we cannot verify.”

The DEPwD earlier this week published what it called aggregated data from the around 94 lakh UDID registrations, minus the socio-economic data, with a statement alongside spelling out the objective of the project - to “create a national database for all Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) along with their socio-economic details” so that policy-making and interventions can be targeted.

The government has not officially disclosed the exact number of people who filled in the socio-economic fields. The first UDID card was issued in January 2017.

The Centre has said the aggregated UDID data were meant to influence e-commerce organisations to design their platforms in a way that increases usability and purchase cycles among PwDs. It has added that the data were collected to also help efficient allocation of resources to address the specific needs of PwDs from various communities. Further, the department said the data were supposed to influence the education sector to introduce special educators and special requirements for PwDs.

However, the fate of these objectives is now in limbo - with the government choosing not to publish the data collected through the fields of personal and family income (spouse and father), whether they were Below Poverty Line, employment status, occupation, socio-economic category (SC/ST/OBC/General), and level of education.