The questionnaire finalised for the survey does not include anything related to disability. Even the half-hearted attempt to capture disability-related data in the previous survey has been abandoned this time. And the excuse, by all counts, is inexplicable.
“Disability is decided on medical certification. Our surveyors are not doctors and they cannot be checking medical certificates. People could not even understand the questions properly,” a principal investigator of the NFHS told the Times of India. The NFHS technical advisory committee asked for the question to be dropped instead of ‘giving inaccurate data’.
by Muralidharan
29/05/2023