Your friendly neighbourhood postman may soon be collecting messages on consumer prices to help the government track inflation better.
A suggestion in this regard has been made to the Department of Posts by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
"We are waiting for the response from them (DoP)," Statistics and Programme Implementation Secretary Pranab Sen said here today.
Sen does not see any difficulty in implementing the proposal as collection of data on consumer prices, which is not a sensitive information, does not require any sophisticated statistical knowledge, but literacy.
"It is very simple. As the postman goes to the village everyday, he can go to a shop and get the checklist filled. He can just enter the prices," he said.
This kind of arrangement could be carried out for collecting data on consumer prices, before extending it to wholesale prices, Sen said.
These figures would then be used for calculating inflation.
To a question, he said only those would be outsourced that are not sensitive in nature. Data collection from firm, however, cannot be outsourced.
