The inside?story?of?the?decline?of a?globally renowned statistical system and its effect on Asia’s third largest economy
New Delhi: Toothless. Powerless. Impotent.
These are the adjectives used to describe India’s apex statistical organization, the National Statistical Commission (NSC). And these haven’t been hurled by its detractors but by three former members of the NSC who have been part of the commission at different points in time.
The NSC shot to prominence in December last year after two of its members resigned, citing undue government influence in the publication of a National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report on jobs, which the NSC had cleared (that report is still under wraps although leaked portions of the report have been published in Business Standard). Today, the NSC is defunct with no new independent members appointed by the government (NSC needs five members to function).
The suppression of the jobs report that led to the resignations was only the last straw that broke the NSC’s back. A Mint investigation reveals that the systemic undermining of the NSC began soon after it was constituted in 2006, and has continued under successive governments at the centre since then. The NSC and the office of the chief statistician of India (CSI)—who apart from being the secretary to the ministry of statistics and programme Implementation (MoSPI) is also the secretary to the NSC— have been at loggerheads for most of this period, fighting battles over turf and resources.
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