Addressing Discrepancies in Official Statistical System

The discrepancies in the statistics produced by different agencies are generally due to issues of definitions, coverage, and differences in statutory and procedural requirements, writes Amitabh Kundu

- Amitabh Kundu

One of the strong points of the Indian statistical system is the availability of information from multiple sources on important key socioeconomic indicators. Information from independent sample surveys, carried out through an established institutional system, such as those of National Sample Survey (NSS) and National Family Health Survey (NFHS), have often been used to cross-validate statistics, available from official or departmental sources and major government programmes. The latter can be accessed through dashboards on the websites of the different departments. The progress of major national programmes is also widely published by the official agencies, unlike in the past where such progress was reported only in their annual reports.

Understandably, there are differences in the magnitude and even the direction of change in the information from government departments and those from established institutional surveys. These discrepancies in the statistics produced by different agencies are generally due to issues of definitions, coverage, and differences in statutory and procedural requirements. The degree of autonomy of the agency involved in data collection and employment of temporary and semiskilled personnel with differential capacity, as against the well-trained permanent survey staff by an established national organisation, contribute to these differences. The data, generated as a by-product of statutes through administrative interventions, often turns out to be incomplete or inaccurate. The differences are mostly not due to any explicit or deliberate agency bias, influencing data collection to produce certain outcomes, but from inherent procedural differences.