CES revamp to make it difficult to compare with past surveys

The Nationwide Statistical Fee, the nation’s apex statistical physique, has expressed issues over the implications of the modifications proposed by the professional group, a number of individuals conscious of the matter stated.

One of many key proposals by the committee is that the survey needs to be performed in three visits to every family as an alternative of 1 to get higher responses.

It is because the questionnaire, which was already lengthy, is ready to get additional stretched as some questions on the federal government’s free foodgrain and healthcare programmes have been added.

The professional committee, headed by former chief statistician Pronab Sen, was arrange by the Centre after the controversial resolution in late 2019 to junk the report of the earlier survey held in 2017-18.

The federal government had earlier stated the survey had points with knowledge high quality, however a number of consultants have questioned the declare and attributed the choice to hostile findings.

The survey is essential because it types the idea of poverty estimation within the nation, together with revision within the base years of the Shopper Worth Index and gross home product (GDP). The newest official estimates date again to 2011-12.

“Earlier, households had been visited as soon as to canvas the entire questionnaire, which used to take 2.5-3 hours, resulting in respondent fatigue and decline within the high quality of knowledge,” Sen stated in an interview.

Nonetheless, if the survey is performed as proposed at present, the info is not going to be corresponding to earlier variations of the survey and, “the previous poverty line not stays legitimate as knowledge is not going to be comparable” to earlier variations of the survey, Sen stated. “Then the poverty line must be reconsidered,” he added.

The NSC’s broad suggestion has been to chop down the canvassing time to enhance knowledge high quality, and following the suggestions of the Sen committee, the fee has additionally advised that steps be taken to make knowledge comparable, an individual conscious of the NSC’s deliberations stated on the situation of anonymity.

“The brand new technique can keep, however parallelly a sub-sample survey needs to be performed as per the previous process so {that a} time-series could be constructed,” the particular person added.

The NSC operates autonomously beneath the ministry of statistics and programme implementation and has a mandate to “evolve insurance policies, priorities and requirements in statistical issues”.

Sen stated his working committee group is more likely to maintain a gathering on 20 June to debate the NSC’s issues.

In November 2019, Enterprise Normal reported, citing a leaked copy of the 2017-18 survey report, that rural consumption had declined because the earlier survey in 2011-12.

This may be the primary decline in consumption in over 4 many years and implied a rise in poverty. Nonetheless, days after the leak, the federal government cited points such because the divergence between consumption estimates by the survey and people captured within the GDP knowledge.

There have been additionally issues that the decline could have been resulting from a number of welfare programmes equivalent to free foodgrain distribution, which will not be getting captured correctly within the survey.

Nonetheless, consultants argued that these points had all the time existed however by no means earlier than had the survey been suppressed, which might be an try and bury inconvenient knowledge.

A current working paper written by Surjit Bhalla, Karan Bhasin and Arvind Virmani claimed that excessive poverty in India was as little as 0.8% in 2019 and remained unchanged in 2020, the primary pandemic 12 months, resulting from in-kind meals subsidies by the federal government.

Consultants are additionally cautious of the numerous modifications within the upcoming survey.

“Each survey undergoes some enhancements, however CES has been stabilized since 1999,” a member of the standing committee on financial statistics stated on the situation of anonymity.

Referring to the inclusion of questions on foodgrain and healthcare subsidies, the member stated: “The survey itself can’t be modified to go well with the needs of the present authorities.”

R. Nagaraj, an economist and visiting school on the Centre for Growth Research, Thiruvananthapuram, stated the Nationwide Pattern Survey Workplace, which conducts the surveys, was not anticipated to permit the issue of incomparability to crop up.

“Statisticians concerned in designing and redesigning questionnaires are often conscious of the issue,” he stated. “Therefore, they might guarantee comparability of all main questions within the questionnaire with the sooner questionnaires.”