New-age reality check: NSO to reboot industrial activity codes

Nail salons, dating services (online and offline), slandering salons, temporary tattoo art, organising of bachelor and bachelorette parties; raising of equines like ponies, donkeys and mules; growing opium, Ashwagandha, Isabgol and Christmas trees — these wide range of services and occupations are some of the new activities that India's official statistical machinery will capture under a proposed new National Industrial Classification (NIC) framework.

- SHIVA RAJORA

Being revised for the first time since 2008, NIC defines different economic activities at a granular level so that their output is added up to arrive at the country's gross domestic product, and factors in the broad shifts in the nature of enterprise undertaken across sectors in recent times.

The last time there was such a long gap in revising the NIC — a set of five digit codes assigned to different activities — was between 1970 and 1987. But with the pace of socio-economic change accelerating in recent years, the magnitude of the revision being undertaken this time is significantly wider.

Even the broad classification of alcohol manufacturing is now proposed to be broken up into various sub-classifications such as vodka, rum, brandy, gin and whisky.

In keeping with the times, installation of electric chargers for electric vehicles and solar systems on buildings have been introduced as new activities along with operation of online food delivery platforms, while trading in radios and CD/DVD players has been swapped by webcams, projec tion screens and streaming equipment. The closest reference to a transistor in the new framework is as an electronic component in connection with semiconductor devices, while video tape distribution has been replaced by OTT platform streaming services.