The neighbourhood postman will now deliver not only the mail and the money orders, but will also collect the rates of essential items and help the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) to compile the date for the rural consumer price index (CPI-R).
The secretary of department of posts, Radhika Doraiswamy has agreed to secretary MoSPI, Pronab Sen?s proposal to utilise the services of the over 50,000 postmen across the country to gather the information in the villages for the specific items under the CPI basket.
Going a step forward, Doraiswamy has said that the postmen will not just collect the rates but also help the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) to file the data online, making the compilation much easier for the man power-strapped NSSO.
The government has been working towards shifting to just two indices?consumer price index-urban (CPI-U) and CPI-Rural (CPI-R) from a multitude of indices. But an acute shortage of human resource, particularly to collect data from the over one lakh villages for the CPI-R has delayed the initiative.
?We will give them (postmen) some training for about 2-3 days regarding the shops that they have to visit and the rates they have to collect for the specific items. It is a simple job. We will also arrange for some stipend for the postmen,? Sen said.
Given the diversity of the country, the data has a wide variety in it, which is why the ministry takes time to compile it. CPI has a variety of products representative of the state. It also reflects the consumption pattern of the state. The CPI is drawn from the state level and then aggregated. ?A key challenge with compiling the CPI is the continuity of manpower. As the products are tightly defined, you cannot have people who collect the data, changing all the time,? Sen pointed.