Ever tried to figure how much time you spend travelling in a day? Or how many hours do women, and men, while away gossiping in a span of 24 hours?
You may soon be able to know. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) is trying to capture the amount of time people take to do various activities during a 24-hour period, with its Time-Use Survey, scheduled to be out in the summer of 2013.
The survey will also measure multiple tasks that women perform at home during 24 hours, which does not even get measured in the gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, the survey will measure unpaid productive work of housewives.
Time-use surveys measure paid and unpaid work of men and women in a society.
With MoSPI’s initiative, India will join the league of developed countries that conduct time use surveys. MoSPI will run the pilot for the survey in two states — Gujarat and Bihar — in December this year. The pilot project, to be run by MoSPI with state statistics bureaus, will help the ministry to go for an India survey next year.
“The pilot will be done in three towns and three villages of these two states by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) under MoSPI, which will be followed by an All-India survey in 2013,” said S R Hashim, chairman of the expert committee on Time Use Survey. Chief Statistician of India T C A Anant said the survey would measure households from the view of the actual time disposal over a day. “So, you look at the people and say what they do in each hour of a day.”
The survey is used for a variety of purposes, but one of its attractiveness is measuring contributions of women, because a lot of women do multiple tasks in a day.
This is expected to give a correct picture of GDP, as it does not take into consideration the imputed cost, or contribution of women at home, who do unpaid household work. However, time use survey is not only for women, explained Anant. It will also measure how much time does one spend on travelling in a day, for instance.
“It gives you measures as to how this travel time varies according to locations, it gives you measures how efficient your transport system is,” he said.
As such, it would give important feedback to the authorities as to how to upgrade transport system of an area concerned.
“Similarly, the employment data that we get now is not very accurate,” said Hashim. “The Time-Use Survey will supplement the employment data to assess the workers actually doing productive work and those doing unproductive work.”
A faint attempt was made in the early 1990s to conduct time-use survey in India, but it could not go beyond a pilot project.
Findings of the pilot project blew a myth that women gossip more than men. Almost one hour was spent a day by both men and women in gossiping and small talk, suggested the pilot project conducted in 1998-99 in six states.
Hashim said since that pilot is more than a decade old now, a fresh one will be conducted in December 2012.
Sixty-two countries conducted at least one national or pilot time use survey during 1990-2008, according to a United Nations Statistics Division study.
Time-use statistics helps explore a wide range of policy concerns such as division of labour, allocation of time for household work, estimation of the value of household production, transportation, leisure and recreation, pension plans, health-care programmes.
Measuring the time use of individuals and families was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century to address social concerns related to the use of labour force, early industrialisation and its effects on society.
