India’s statistical system still has questions to answer

livemint.com:

I am glad to note that India’s longest-serving chief statistician, T.C.A. Anant, found some useful insights in my recent Carnegie Endowment working paper, India’s Statistical System: Past, Present, Future (shorturl.at/FIJOU). But he objects to the narrative of a long decline in India’s official statistical system in his Mint column last week (shorturl.at/chrM6).

My paper suggests that India’s statistical system was the envy of the world till the early 1970s, and saw a gradual decline since then. Anant contends that the 1970s and 1980s saw several improvements in the statistical system. He cites the examples of the regional accounts committee in 1972 that helped standardize state domestic product estimates and the recommendations of the NSS review committee that led to the establishment of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) in 1970.

Both these examples pertain to the early 1970s, and do not contradict the paper’s argument that the statistical system saw greater initiative till the early 1970s. Second, Anant’s article seems to oversell the impact of the NSS review committee. The committee was supposed to help speed-up the publication of NSS results, as Anant correctly points out.