New govt surveys will track your online buying behaviour too

But will they capture shifts in consumption pattern caused by the move from offline to online?

The government surveys on expenditure will now gauge the spending habits of Indian consumers on e-commerce, apart from offline purchases. However, the moot question is whether the surveys would show any drastic change in consumer behaviour apart from the mode of such spends.

For instance, the average urban Indian spent 42.6 per cent of household consumption on food in 2011-12, according to the previous survey, compared with 53 per cent spent by a villager. Roughly, an average of these two percentages is taken to arrive at the constitution of food and related items in the consumer price index (CPI).