Reconstituted committee on official statistics to settle data controversies

Amid a raging debate on the quality of official data and the sampling methodologies followed, the government has renamed and expanded the scope of an existing standing committee headed by former chief statistician of India Pronab Sen.

The Standing Committee on Economic Statistics (SCES) — constituted in December 2019 — has been turned into the Standing Committee on Statistics (SCoS). It will have a two-year tenure for the chairman and its 16 members.

In a notification issued last week, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) said that the reconstituted SCoS will now have a broader mandate.

It would review the framework and results of all surveys brought before it by the MoSPI. 

The committee has been tasked to review the existing framework and address the issues raised from time to time on the subject/ results/ methodology related to all surveys as brought before the SCoS by MoSPI.

The terms of reference also ask the standing committee to advise on survey methodology. These include sampling frame, sampling design, survey instruments and finalisation of tabulation plan of surveys and survey results.

The recent criticism of the quality of official data has largely come from the chairman and the members of the PM Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM).

Shamika Ravi, member EAC-PM, in a recent article published in the Indian Express, said all major surveys in India that were conducted post-2011, and used the Census 2011 for the sampling frame, have overestimated the proportion of the rural population significantly.

Sen had countered her views in an opinion piece published in the same newspaper.

When reached out, Ravi welcomed the reconstitution of the standing committee as a step in the right direction.

“The data quality has been a pressing concern for long in India, as till now, the focus was solely quantitative in nature and on generating more data. Going forward, we should start looking at the data qualitatively, especially at our sample frames and the methodologies involved,” she told Business Standard.

Sonalde Desai, professor at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and a member of the reconstituted standing committee said India had a very good history of statistical system and it is time to make sure that it stays in touch with the transformations in data collection and change in policy needs.  

“Indian sampling systems have been pretty good and all samples need to have a base on which you draw so that it can be properly representative of the population. And, as you go further and further from the Census, it becomes more and more of a challenge. But it is easily fixable. Once the new Census data is available, it will take care of it,” she added.

The standing committee has also been mandated to provide guidance to conduct pilot surveys/ pre-testing, if necessary, before finalising schedules for data collection.

It will also provide guidance for studying and exploring the availability of administrative statistics relating to surveys/statistics and provide guidance to study/identify data gaps/additional data requirements for surveys/statistics and suggest appropriate strategies for improvement. 

Besides, the committee can also provide technical guidance to the central and state-level agencies for the surveys.