New Delhi: The Union government has established a new oversight mechanism for official data, replacing the Standing Committee on Economic Statistics (SCES), set up in late 2019, with a Standing Committee on Statistics (SCoS).
The SCES was tasked with examining economic indicators pertaining to the industrial sector, the services sector, and the labour force statistics. This meant that their purview was limited to datasets like the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the Annual Survey of Industries, the Index of Industrial Production and the Economic Census, the Hindu reported.
The new panel is said to have a broader mandate to review the framework and results of all surveys conducted under the National Statistical Office (NSO).
Pronab Sen, India’s first chief statistician and the former Chairman of the National Statistical Commission, has been named the new chair of the committee.
It has 10 official members, and four non-official members who are eminent academics. The panel can have up to 16 members, the newspaper reported.
The SCES was also chaired by Sen. It had 28 members, including 10 non-official members,
The move comes after the previous round of household surveys on consumption expenditure and employment was discarded due to concerns about “data quality”.
The order was issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) on July 13.
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The panel will help finalise survey results, but the NSC will have the ultimate authority to approve the publication of those results, the daily reported.
The development comes amid sharp criticism of the Indian statistical machinery by experts from inside and outside the government.
chairperson of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Bibek Debroy, had called for an overhaul of the Indian statistical system and had said that there is “little expertise in survey design”.
Independent journalist Pramit Bhattacharya, who published a paper titled India’s statistical system: past, present and future, highlighted several problems with Indian statistics.
He also pointed out systemic problems such as the perceived lack of independence of the NSO, instances of government wanting to control the data narrative, conflict between the MOSPI and various arms of government hurting quality and importance of statisticians at the central and state level, and the lack of financial and human resources.
He recommended setting up of a new statistical reforms commission and a CAG-like structure for the statistics department as well.
P.C. Mohanan, former member of National Statistical Commission, told CNBCTV-18 that the deterioration of the National Sample Survey, the Central Statistics Office and interference of non-statistical people in data collection exercise has led to the statistical crisis in India.