Weak statistics on agriculture and social sectors

Chairperson of National Statistical Commission says weak data collection at ground level has lead to creation of unreliable statistics.

Updated on: Apr 10, 2007, 20:27:24 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Government’s statistical generation methodology received thumbs down from its top statistician, Professor SD Tandulkar, chairperson National Statistical Commission, said on Tuesday. Weak data collection at the ground level has lead to creation of unreliable statistics, he said.

The National Sample Survey Organisation and the Central Statistical Organisation provides data on social indicators as well as economic indicators to help the government in framing the policies. But, the top statistician has put a pertinent question to the government on the data regarding agriculture, heath and education.

At the conference of Central and State Statistical Organisations, Tandulkar spoke about ‘widespread weakness’ of data generation at the ground level leading to unreliable, inadequate and inaccurate statistics. "Such statistics undermine very usefulness for policy framing. Quality of data at primary level leaves a lot to be desired," he said.

Quoting Rangarajan Commission over poor quality of data collection at the primary level, he gave two reasons for this - low priority on data generation and public servants not serious about data collection. "This is self-defeating as good data can leads to sound policy," he said, while indicating at possible political interference in data collection.

From the internal note circulated by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, it appears that data collection in agriculture is extremely poor. On gross state domestic product estimates, no data is available on bye-products of agriculture and livestock, index of agriculture production, expenditure on new construction and wholesale price index.

Data on horticulture is not reliable and authentic in absence of proper validation system. We also don’t have data on market arrivals, prices and exports of agricultural products. Such data can help in issuing advance warning about impending crises leading to price rise, the document states.

With regard to savings, India’s growing private sector is excluded from data collection. Similarly, employment figures for the private sector are not collected. On pivotal social indicator of health and education, there is no data available on children fully immunised, pre-natal mortality and out of school children in gender classification.

GK Vasan, minister for programme implementation, urged the statisticians to evolve standardised product to generate comparable data considering that private sector was contributing two-third of the total investment in the country. He also announced that a World Bank assisted study on Indian Statistical for strengthening Directorates of Economics and Statistics all over the country has been launched.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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