Hamid Ansari raises concern over quality of social statistics

Says poor quality data hurting analysis of some of the most important elements of Indian economy

Vice-President Hamid Ansari on Friday raised serious concerns over the quality of public statistics in India and infringement of privacy by government's data collection machinery.

Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the four-day International Seminar on Social Statistics, organised by the Asian Development and Research Institute (ADRI) in Patna on Friday, the Vice President said that the some criticism of the Indian public statistics, especially on the measurement of cross cutting social issues such as gender disparity, inequality, poverty and growth seems to be valid and have attracted opprobrium. 

He said, "All is not well in Indian social statistics sector. Concerns have been raised about the quality of data being generated... It's not only undermining credibility of Indian statistics, but also hurting the analysis of some of the most important elements of the Indian economy."

He also quoted French economist Thomas Piketty on the reluctance of government of India to release the caste census results. The Vice President said, "Piketty has lamented the huge gap in statistics in India exemplified by paucity of data on income tax and the reluctance of the government to release the caste census results. Even after the government recently released official figures for the income tax in 2012-13, Piketty has said that the data was too thin to draw conclusion about the levels of inequality in India."

"Piketty, later, added that we see the same problem with access to caste census data that was supposed to clarify the link between caste, income, wealth and income inequality. This limits our ability to put India on a map in terms of inequality."

He said given the fast pace of changes in structure of the economy in face of deregulation, liberalisation and competition, it is important that indices that reveal the underlying mechanism of our society and economy are further refined and updated to provide relevant and timely information to the policy makers.

Speaking on the occasion, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar raised the issue of non-publication of caste census data. He said, "The ST-SC census has been carried out after independence, backward castes census has not been done, depriving them proportional representation and share in various walk of life. This is not caste based politics, but to erase the caste divide itself."