Pranab Mukherjee: Encourage spirit of free questioning

OPINION

The constructive participation of the Indian Statistical Institute should be restored at the government level.

As regards the planning for national development, the closeness of Professor Mahalanobis with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru can be traced to 1940, when they began in-depth discussion. In one of his writings, Professor Mahalanobis notes that after a particular day's work was over, he and Pandit Nehru started talking and continued well past two in the morning.

In India, statistics came to the centre stage in national life through sample surveys consistently conducted since the 1930s by Professor Mahalanobis and his colleagues in the ISI to understand complex problems of national development and social welfare.

This involvement was enhanced when, after independence, Professor Mahalanobis was appointed honorary statistical adviser to the Cabinet. In 1950, through his initiative, the National Sample Survey was undertaken for a socio-economic survey of all-India coverage on a continuing basis. This provided the central government with a database for various developmental programmes for the first time, particularly with respect to the country's five-year plans. In 1951, the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) was set up at the initiative of Professor Mahalanobis. In 1954, Prime Minister Nehru entrusted him and his colleagues in the institute with the responsibility of preparing the draft Second Five-Year Plan.

During the Cold War era, Professor Mahalanobis was perhaps the only Indian scientist who was equally welcome in the USA and the USSR as well as in China and Japan. This should be a noteworthy precedent, which could have some relevance in the midst of the present cross-currents of globalisation.

Professor Mahalanobis had pointed out, in his well-known speech delivered to the American Statistical Association on November 27, 1964 under the title "Statistics as a Key Technology", that "it is not difficult to see what is wrong with official statistics in India. ... There is lack of appreciation of the need to cross-examine the data, which is the first responsibility of a statistician". Unfortunately "anything supplied or published by a government office is accepted as reliable. To have any doubt would be a challenge to established authority. The very idea of having cross-checks is frightening as conflicting results arising from independent checks would be 'confusing' and must be resisted and is being resisted even today. In this situation, statistical servicing is bound to remain weak despite knowledge of theoretical statistics".

The constructive participation of the ISI in national policies should be restored at the government level, both at the Centre and in the states, particularly in the context of the recent amendments of the Indian Constitution, which have ushered in a process of decentralisation with emphasis on social justice. This requirement has been stressed by the Third ISI Review Committee, as the report of the review committee noted that "it is important for the institute to keep in view its relevance in the programme of national development and decentralised planning with social justice. This also would require formulation of suitable projects for investigation... A suitable body is needed for this purpose, with members in it who are given to keeping themselves acquainted with national issues and are experienced in concretising long-term plans. They would need to have interest in such developments like the report given by the National Statistical Commission and obtaining inputs from the central and the state planning bodies".

While the ISI should systematically take up these important tasks, we should encourage the ISI's cherished tradition of free questioning spirit.

(Excerpts from Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee's speech at the 114th birth anniversary of Professor PC Mahalanobis, June 29, 2007)