On May 23, while the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha election was underway, the NDA government passed an order to merge the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) with the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The order, which cleared the formation of an overarching body — National Statistical Office (NSO) — skipped any mention of the National Statistical Commission (NSC). This is unfortunate. As the NSC is an independent body which oversees technical aspects of the NSSO’s statistical work, the worry is that this move will impinge on the autonomy enjoyed by the NSSO so far. Coming at a time when data put out by the Indian statistical system is already under a cloud of suspicion, this is likely to raise further questions over the independence of the statistical system.
This series of events, followed by the government’s latest order, is likely to increase scepticism of official data. But, while the more immediate concern is that of the role of the NSC, the larger concern is the decline of what was once a famed statistical system. For a government that should have begun its new term by re-building the credibility of the system, this is not a good start.
