India plans new population census, economic data improvements
population census, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Statistics Ministry has made a number of proposals that have been discussed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office in the past month, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private.
These include reviving its survey of businesses, last released in 2014, and publishing the household consumption survey on an annual basis, the people said. It also plans to introduce a uniform base year for key indicators and update the basket of goods for calculating inflation, they said.
Separately, the government is also considering a new population census once elections are completed, the people said. The census is usually conducted once a decade, and was last published in 2011, with the most recent survey delayed because of the pandemic.
Economists have frequently called for an overhaul of India’s statistics, while Modi's own economic advisory council has raised concerns about the quality of the data. With India’s economy expanding rapidly and global investor interest growing, official figures are coming under more scrutiny. Relying on outdated surveys also raises the risk of policy errors.
India’s Statistics Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office didn’t respond to requests for further information.
The census would include training and deploying more than 300,000 government staff to enumerate citizens in the world’s most populous nation, the people said. The survey exercise would likely last about 12 months, one of the people
