House panel moots statistical authority

The committee said since correct statistics are not only vitally important in the planning process but also for monitoring of the various governmental schemes and for taking proper timely corrective action, the area needed to be addressed as top priority.

The department of statistics secretary told the committee that due to a lack of coordination between the central government, the state governments and between different departments and ministries of the Union government and also due to taking recourse to different concepts, there was a huge variation in the data compiled by the centraland the state governments.

He informed that former finance minister Manmohan Singh had mooted the idea of a high-powered statistical commission to look into all aspects of quality of data, its timeliness and reliability.

The idea, he told the committee, had been under consideration of the department for some time. Floating the idea of a statistical authority with a reasonable amount of independence in functioning and lot of autonomy in recruitment, a cabinet note had been prepared, he said. The committee desired that the proposal be taken up in right earnest.

As the department had stated non-filling of posts in various cadres as one of the reasons for poor collection of statistics, the committee recommended expeditious filling up of existing vacancies, both at the level of officers as well as field level investigators.

The secretary had told the committee that there were about 40 per cent vacancies in the cadre of Indian statistical service officers and about 30 per cent vacancies in the cadre offield investigators, who were the basis of the department’s collection of entire statistics. "Unfortunately, when we tend to take up the issue of filling up of posts, particularly on the expenditures on the non-Plan side, a global view is taken regarding the reduction of expenditure," the secretary told the committee.