New Delhi: In 2000 – when India’s statistical body was going through a major crisis after economic liberalization in the early 1990s – the central government under then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee set up a high-level commission to recommend reforms .
Twenty years later, more than half of the reforms recommended by the Rangarajan Commission were named after C. Rangarajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, who chaired the panel. It has not been implemented, according to a new paper from the US-based think-tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
paper, Topic ‘India’s Statistical System: Past, Present and Future’ and written by senior journalist Pramit Bhattacharya, throws light on the history and current status of government statistical offices in India. The most glaring is the lack of a legal framework for the National Statistical Commission (NSC) – India’s top recommendatory body for statistical reforms set up in 2005, according to the paper released on Thursday to mark India’s National Statistics Day on June 29. organization to do. Rangarajan Commission’s recommendation.
The newspaper pulled no punches when it came to criticizing the state of India’s statistics department – it found India’s data to be out of date and severely lacking, especially given that information such as the population census and consumer expenditure The last official numbers of vital statistical data are out of date. Till 2011-12.
The National Statistics Day, observed on 29 June every year since 2007, commemorates India’s foremost statistician and founder of the premier Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, PC Mahalanobis, on his birth anniversary.
A leading statistician, Mahalanobis was a key member of the first Planning Commission of independent India and was instrumental in formulating India’s strategy for industrialization in the Second Five Year Plan. He is also credited with starting National Sample Survey – one of the oldest and most diverse household surveys in India –
in the 1950s.
To mark the occasion, the RBI also made public a speech by RBI Deputy Governor Michael Debabrata Patra on Monday, in which he explained how “by reducing uncertainty in a quantitative value, statistics can make monetary policy its trade-offs”. Enables you to manage and chart it. courses through the known and unknown unknowns”.
Read also: India has a $1 trillion digital dream, but 73% youth lack basic email skills, reveals NSSO survey
‘Worst time’
Bhattacharya’s paper clarifies the importance of statistics in policy making.
“A country’s statistical system acts as its mirror… It produces data that allows observers to see how a country is doing on key indicators such as per capita income, inflation, poverty, life expectancy and average years of schooling.” How well it is performing on socio-economic parameters. This enables policy-makers and investors to “make informed decisions”, the newspaper said.
In many ways, this is “the worst of times for India’s data users”, according to Bhattacharya, who draws his findings from interviews with key stakeholders in the Indian statistical system, including bureaucrats, government officials and academics who rely on government data .
“The uninterrupted sequence of population census of India since 1881 has been broken,” the paper said. “The last decennial census was held in 2011. The 2021 census has been postponed indefinitely. Other key datasets are badly out of date.”
But, it is not just data on population and demographics that is lagging far behind. According to the paper, India’s official consumer expenditure data is from 2011-2012, as the next survey conducted in 2017-2018 was rejected by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation (MoSPI) “apparently due to data quality concerns”. .
“The lack of fresh consumption data means that India’s consumer price index (CPI) and official poverty estimates are tied to outdated data,” the paper said. “The results of the latest Economic Census and several new surveys have been kept secret. Some of India’s key statistics – such as the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and gross domestic product (GDP) – have been the subject of controversy for many years.
As if these issues were not enough, the paper said that India’s apex statistical body has not only failed as a regulator, but is also not empowered to succeed as a regulator, as it lacks the legislative backing recommended by the Rangarajan panel. There is a lack of
“India’s top statistical regulator, the National Statistical Commission (NSC), has struggled to raise its voice on these issues,” the paper said. “The NSC was to audit statistical products on a regular basis, providing a much-needed quality assurance mechanism for data users. But it has failed to play that role.”
Unsuccessful authority, lack of legal backing
In his paper, Bhattacharya Discusses the decline in the authority of India’s statistical agencies after the death of Mahalanobis in 1972, and enumerates the efforts made since then to revive them.
Bhattacharya claimed that 88 per cent of the data consumers he spoke to are of the opinion that there is a big crisis in India’s data landscape.
According to the paper, a major problem was the inefficiency of the Central Statistics Organization (now called the Central Statistics Office) – an institution the statistician had founded in 1951 – in the “post-Mahalanobis era”.
The CSO is a government agency responsible for coordinating statistical activities in India and for developing and maintaining statistical standards. Both NSC and CSO come under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation.
The paper stated, “Mahalanobis’ scientific achievements, his global stature and his unique position in the Nehru cabinet ensured that he could function as a one-man statistical commission.” “In the post-Mahalanobis era, the CSO struggled to assert its authority over other departments and ministries.”
The situation led to “several high-level committees” being set up to reform the system – such as the Narayan-Bhatnagar Committee in 1979 and the Rangarajan Commission in 2001.
According to the paper, both committees described the decline as a key element – ”vulnerability”. Statistical coordination between Ministries and States.
Despite this, however, problems persisted, mainly because many of the recommendations of both panels were ignored.
Rangarajan commission in 2001 reported The need to keep the statistical system separate from current politics. It recommended the creation of an apex body – the National Statistical Commission – which would be backed by a law and would be accountable to Parliament rather than the government of the day, said Bhattacharya in his paper. “The National Statistical Commission will collectively play the role that Mahalanobis played in the early years of India’s independence.”
Years later, not only is recommended legal support for the NSC still missing, but, according to the paper, the body “has at present failed in most of its objectives in terms of reforms”.
In his paper, Bhattacharya comes up with another solution – setting up a Statistical Reforms Commission that would “transform India’s statistical architecture” and “Focus on the issue of Centre-State coordination on statistics”. It added that the body would have legislative backing.
The paper states, “The statistical system today is at a critical juncture as it struggles to meet the needs of the new economy without compromising statistical integrity.” “A new Reforms Commission can outline a road map for reforms and assure all stakeholders about the seriousness of the government in fixing the major governance deficit. A lot has changed in the world of statistics since the Rangarajan Commission submitted its report in 2001. The time has come for a fresh review and a comprehensive plan to reintroduce the statistical system.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Read also: How government surveys can be updated to better understand the financial lives of Indian households