'Firms reluctant to share data'

Q&A/ Pronab Sen, Chief Statistician of India

assumed charge as Chief Statistician of India on February 21, at a time when the country's economy is booming.

As numbers project a rosy pisture, the need for more accurate and relevant data is gaining ground. Sen, who spoke with Asit Ranjan Mishra, said his focus would be to reshape the entire statistical setup. Excerpts:

How robust and precise are our indices and data collection methods when compared with international standards?

Not too bad actually. We tend to be conservative. If we make any mistakes, it is on the side of conservativism.

What is the major problem you face in data collection

One of the major problems is collecting data from companies. Here, companies are very, very reluctant to give data, unlike in most countries, where companies themselves file data returns.

As far as surveys are concerned, respondents, particularly in the urban areas, are reluctant to fill up questionnaires.

Our consumption survey (form) takes two-and-a-half-hours to fill up. Changes cannot be introduced suddenly without a fair amount of experimentation. We also have to keep in mind that the data we collect is historically comparable.

Don't you think Indian data collection methods need an overhaul? Is there any plan to outsource government data collection to private agencies?

Technology can make a lot of difference, but it cannot do all. If we can move towards return-based data filing by companies, I can focus more on surveys.

Another challenge is to use more IT (information technology). A lot of transcription errors are committed by data entry operators. We experimented with Simputers, which did not work that well.

A major problem we face in India is the multiplicity of languages. At present, we are experimenting with an intelligent character recognition software, which recognises scanned handwritten documents, thus avoiding any intermediate error.

What is the percentage of underestimation of the domestic production data and by what percentage?

We do not know. We do the best we can do. Still we know we are not covering the whole. It will be pretty difficult to guess any underestimation.

The commerce ministry has set up a committee to come out with a service price index. Will the service price index included in calculating other indices like the wholesale price index (WPI)?

First, we have to see their findings. Nowhere in the world does WPI include prices of services. Services are very notorious to measure. Quality variation becomes a major issue.

However, we need a price index for the service sector, as WPI makes sense only for manufacturing and agriculture sectors.

There have been reports that the National Statistical Commission is planning two different consumer price indices for rural and urban India. What purpose will these serve? What will be the periodicity of these indices?

Dynamics of price formation in rural and urban markets is different. That is why we need two separate indices for these markets. We have not finalised the periodicity. The basic structure is done. Data collection has started. We have to figure out how time-consuming it is.

NSSO has released two data sets to calculate poverty level this year, mixed recall period and uniform recall period. Is it not confusing? Which of the two is better to calculate poverty?

The Planning Commission has set up a committee under Suresh Tendulkar to look into the wider range of issues relating to poverty ranking, including poverty line. There is no question of better or worse. There has to be consistency in data.

Poverty line is based on uniform recall period data. You cannot have data through mixed recall period and compare it with the present poverty line to find poverty levels. The two are simply incomparable. If you want to use mixed recall period data, there has to be a poverty line constructed on the basis of such data.

Economist Surjit Bhalla has raised a question that consumption-to-GDP ratio is declining, according to the NSSO data. Is it basically due to inadequacy of data? What is being done in this regard?

Well, consumption is growing but not as fast. This is, in fact, a serious issue. We had set up one expert group, which pointed out some of the reasons. We have set up another committee to look into the reason for this widening gap.