Delay in census: Govt dissolves Standing Committee on Statistics

Standing Committee on Statistics Chairman and former Chief Statistician of India Pronab Sen said that no reason was cited for dissolution of the committee. “It has been dissolved. No reason was cited by the Ministry. They just informed through an e-mail,” he told The Indian Express.

When asked whether the reasons for the delay in census led to the dissolution, Sen said, “There was no recent discussion. All the members had earlier expressed concerns that in absence of censuses, both economic census and census, household surveys are unreliable. This was discussed earlier in the meetings,” Sen said.

Other members of the committee included Sonalde Desai, Professor, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER); Biswanath Goldar, former Professor, Institute of Economic Growth; S K Sasi Kumar, former Senior Fellow, VV Giri National Labour Institute; S Chandrasekhar, Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research; Tauqeer Ahmad, Head of Division, Division of Sample Surveys, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute; Sandip Mitra, Associate Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Mausumi Bose, professor, Applied Statistics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute; and officials from the Reserve Bank of India and MoSPI.

The new committee is headed by National Statistical Commission (NSC) Chairman Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar and at least four members of the SCoS have been included in it.
The SCoS was set up “to review the extant framework and to address the issues raised from time to time on the subject/ results/ methodology, etc. related to all surveys as brought before the SCoS by MoSPI; to advise on survey methodology including sampling frame, sampling design, survey instruments, etc. and to finalise tabulation plan of surveys; finalisation of survey results”.

The committee was also mandated to provide guidance to conduct pilot surveys/ pre-testing, if necessary, before finalising schedules for data collection along with providing guidance for studying and exploring the availability of administrative statistics relating to surveys/statistics and provide guidance to study/identify data gaps/additional data requirements, if any, for surveys/statistics and suggest appropriate strategies for improvement.

The new committee had been formed last year at a time when India’s statistical system was under criticism, especially from three members of the Economic Advisory Council to the PM (EAC-PM) including Chairman Bibek Debroy and members Shamika Ravi and Sanjeev Sanyal.