A parliamentary panel has pitched for the grant of statutory status to the National Statistical Commission (NSC), an apex body mandated to suggest policy and standards in statistical matters, to enable it to realise its full potential as an autonomous body.
In its NSC performance review report presented in Parliament last week, the standing committee on finance, headed by BJP MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, stated that the commission “has yet to realise its full potential due to the absence of statutory backing and limited enforcement capacity”.
The NSC was set up in 2006 through an executive order. The government has to bring a bill in Parliament to grant it statutory powers.
“By granting the NSC statutory authority, empowering it to coordinate and prescribe national statistical standards, and institutionalising functions such as regular statistical audits, India can establish a harmonised, transparent and credible statistical framework. Drawing from global best practices, particularly models like the UK Statistics Authority, the NSC should be restructured as an autonomous and accountable institution reporting to Parliament, supported by a professionally managed statistical office,” the report said.
The report said the NSC had a part-time chairperson and four part-time members nominated by the government. In 2019, the NDA government had prepared a draft bill to make the NSC a statutory body, but it was not introduced in Parliament.
Prof. Rajeeva Karandikar, chairman of the NSC and former director of the Chennai Mathematical Institute, told The Telegraph that various key government departments and independent institutions, including the courts, were not even aware of the NSC or did not refer matters to the commission, thinking it to be part of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (Mospi).
However, going by its mandate, the NSC is responsible for overseeing the core statistics used by the government.
“The activities of the NSC do not match its mandate. Some of the ministries discuss their survey design, methodology and findings with the NSC but many key government bodies do not. If the NSC is made a statutory body, perhaps as part of the PMO or the Niti Aayog, with an appropriate mandate, it can fulfil its mandate and contribute to the nation,” he said.
Karandikar said statistical analysis went beyond the GDP, employment data or wholesale price index. “The NSC can play a positive role in normalisation of marks in multiphase computer-administered tests conducted for government jobs or for admission to elite institutions such as IITs and IIMs, VVPAT validation of EVM design and so on,” he said.
“Along with the census, the government collects a lot of data in the course of its activities, such as data on income tax returns, GST returns, UPI payments, intra-bank transfers and toll collected on national highways. Along with survey data collected
by Mospi, these data sets can be used for decision-making by the government,” Karandikar added.
P.C. Mohanan, former acting chairperson of the NSC, said the commission was constrained by various limitations, including the lack of independent full-time specialists in statistics, data analysis and economics and paucity of funds.
“Because it does not have independent full-time specialists to analyse data or examine any survey methodology, the NSC depends on ready-made presentations by the line ministries on data and analysis. If the NSC is made a statutory body, it should be provided the required human resources,” Mohanan said.
Mohanan said if the government accepted the standing committee recommendation, the proposed NSC should be able to oversee and analyse any data collection exercise, including census, and publish its reports.
In 2019, Mohanan had resigned from the post of acting chairperson of the NSC after the government overruled its decision for the immediate release of a report on the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18 conducted by the National Sample Survey Office that found India’s unemployment rate was 6.1 per cent, the highest in the previous four decades.