India needs a new way to track its micro-enterprises

An enterprise sample registration system could help us plug a significant statistical gap

- PRAMIT BHATTACHARYA

Even before we could get to see the results of the seventh economic census (conducted in 2019-20), plans were afoot to conduct the eighth one in the coming months. India's economic census is supposed to be a comprehensive database of all firms in the country, including micro-enterprises. It is supposed to be conducted every five years and serve as a sampling frame for informal-sector surveys. These surveys are then used to estimate the informal sector's contribution to national output.

Ever since the first economic census was launched in the mid-1970s, there have been recurrent complaints regarding data quality: both from within the statistical establishment and from outside. Since the economic census is conducted jointly by the National Statistical Office (NSO) and state directorates of economics and statistics (DES), the exercise has been marred by coordination, staffing and supervision problems.

When the seventh economic census was being conceived, given the delays in the sixth iteration and doubts over data quality, the National Statistical Commission had recommended that the next one not be conducted till those problems were sorted out. But the NSO went ahead with its plans and deployed staff from the information technology ministry's Common Service Centres (CSC) to conduct the census. The role of state DES was minimized. The results were even more disappointing than earlier, and may not be released.