UDID Scheme

UDID Scheme 

About Unique Disability ID (UDID) scheme 

• • The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities launched it, and its goal is to create a comprehensive, end-to-end integrated system for granting persons with disabilities disability details and universal identification cards.
  • The implementation aims to create a National Database for PwDs and provide each individual with a disability with a Unique Disability Identity Card.

Goal: 

• • To make it possible for PwDs to apply for programs and benefits by obtaining a new UDID card or disability certificate. 

Significance

• • It will guarantee uniformity and promote openness, effectiveness, and simplicity in the distribution of government benefits to individuals with disabilities. 
  • It will also facilitate the tracking of beneficiaries’ financial and physical advancement at every stage of the implementation hierarchy, including the village, block, district, state, and federal levels.
    

About the Data 

• • In the last six years, the Union government has registered roughly 94 lakh Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) nationwide for Unique Disability ID (UDID) cards, while discarding any socioeconomic data it may have gathered. 
  • The information being shelved includes PwDs’ socioeconomic category (caste), degree of education, employment status, income (personal and family), and marital status. 
  • According to officials, all of these fields were made optional because the form’s primary goal was to gather data on disabilities.
  • As such, a lot of people ignored them. 
  • The government is defending the action by casting doubt on the “quality” of the socioeconomic data that was gathered. 

Objectives 

• • The combined UDID data was intended to persuade online retailers to build their websites with PwDs’ ease of use and purchase cycles in mind. 
  • The information was gathered to aid in the effective distribution of resources to meet the unique requirements of PWDs from diverse communities. 
  • The information was intended to persuade the education sector to implement special educators and PWD-specific requirements.
    

Issues and Concerns 

• • The government’s decision to withhold data collected in the fields of employment status, occupation, socio-economic category (SC/ST/OBC/General), level of education, and personal and family income (spouse and father) has left the above objectives in limbo. 
  • A Parliamentary panel had questioned the Department’s ability to gather timely and accurate population data through the UDID mechanism, and the government’s plans to create a unified database of disability and socio-economic data for PwDs have been put on hold.

Government’s Stand 

• • The data includes district-specific, gender-specific, age-specific, and disability type (including degree of disability) UDID information. 
  • The government hoped that this would assist researchers and NGOs in the social sector in creating physical infrastructure that is accessible to people with particular kinds and degrees of disabilities.
  • The government had stated that the purpose of the UDID forms was to gather sufficient data to create customized policies for them, in light of the indefinite postponement of the 2021 Census.
    

Unique ID for Persons with Disabilities” Project

• • The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities launched it with the goal of creating a comprehensive, end-to-end integrated system for granting disability certificates and universal identification to people with disabilities, including information about their identity and conditions.
  •  The implementation aims to create a National Database for Persons with Disabilities and provide each individual with a Disability Identity Card. 
  • In January 2017, the first UDID card was released. 
  • It will guarantee uniformity in addition to promoting openness, effectiveness, and simplicity in the distribution of government benefits to individuals with disabilities.