To address the issues of delays and inadequacies in the socio-economic surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the government is planning to appoint the National Statistical Commission (NSC) as an advisory body to the survey office, whose role would be to provide technical assistance to NSSO and oversee its survey exercise, an official aware of the matter told FE.
The NSC is expected to play the role of the erstwhile “Governing Council” of the NSSO, which was dissolved in 2006. The Governing Council had members who were experts, and not part of the government. Their suggestions were useful in fixing gaps in the survey exercises, which field officers were not necessarily aware of.
The NSC, post appointment, would be expected to oversee the methodology of several socio-economic surveys, and recommend changes wherever necessary.
“The government is likely to make the appointment in the coming weeks. Earlier, the government had thought of doing so post polls, but they may not wait that long…this issue has been pending for several years,” the official said.
At present, the NSC has five members, which includes Chairperson, CEO of Niti Aayog, Secretary of Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), and two members. There are two more seats, which are vacant.
Experts say the move is expected to benefit the NSSO as the surveys they publish are not likely to be held back, and published without any interference from the government.
“The NSSO will get more autonomy in doing surveys and publishing its results, once NSC is appointed to oversee the process,” said PC Mohanan, former acting chairman of NSC. “The public trust will increase in NSSO’s findings. This is the major advantage.”
Earlier in 2019, Mohanan had resigned as acting chairman of the NSC, in protest at a delay in releasing a new set of jobs statistics. Another member of the body, J Meenakshi, had quit with him. The survey had reportedly revealed that India’s unemployment rate in the year ending June 2018 rose to 6.1 percent, its highest level in at least 45 years.
Moreover, the NSC’s advisory role to NSSO is expected to come at a time when the statistics ministry is planning to conduct several new socio-economic surveys at the request of other ministries.
Earlier this week FE reported that several ministries including agriculture, commerce, labour, tourism and health have separately written to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) for technical and manpower support for these additional statistical exercises. The areas covered in the proposed surveys include tourism footfall surveys of different states, ailments among the elderly and price estimation of industrial inputs.
The NSSO is mandated to conduct large-scale sample surveys in diverse fields across India. It conducts data through nationwide household surveys on various socio-economic subjects, such as Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) etc.
The NSSO also collects data on rural and urban prices for retail inflation index, conducts crop estimation surveys for state agencies and maintains a frame of urban-area units for use in sample surveys. Its survey arm has four divisions – Survey Design and Research Division (SDRD), Field Operations Division (FOD), Data Processing Division (DPD), and Survey Coordination Division (SCD). The FOD has a network of six zonal offices, 52 regional offices and 117 sub-regional offices spread throughout the country, and is responsible for the collection of primary data for the surveys.