First-ever income survey toughest; anonymity and awareness key: MoSPI secy

THE FIRST EVER, pan-India National Household Income Survey (NHIS), slated to begin in February, may be one of the “toughest” surveys the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has done and key to its success will be raising public awareness and gaining their confidence, MoSPI secretary Saurabh Garg said in an interview.

- AANCHAL MAGAZINE & SIDDHARTH UPASANI

“Globally, income surveys are the toughest. That’s the reason we have tried three times in the past and then we had to back out. But we are going to go ahead with this, but let’s see what the results come out to be. We can’t predict that, but we are hopeful’, Garg said.

The NHIS is set to be launched in February 2026 and its results should be available by the middle of 2027.

Past efforts to measure incomes of Indian households have not led to pilot surveys translating into nationwide surveys on income distribution due to difficulties in collecting reliable income data, with some even showing income levels to be lower than the sum of consumption and savings.

Garg said that not just other countries but some private agencies in India too conduct such income surveys and that they require “greater effort and rapport building”.

Household surveys on their incomes are notoriously difficult on account of people's hesitancy to divulge information on the money they earn from various sources. Earlier attempts to conduct income surveys date back to the 1950s, when the government tried to collect information on income as part of its consumer expenditure surveys on an experimental basis. Further attempts were made in the 1960s as part of the Integrated Household Survey.