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New consumer expenditure survey is long overdue. Govt should move to doing surveys on a more regular basis

If a CMIE can survey over 2,36,000 households thrice every year, there is no reason why the National Statistical Office cannot do a CES, which is based on a more comprehensive questionnaire, at least annually, even with a smaller sample size.

The current data vacuum is in contrast to 2011-2, when there was a surfeit of information from the decennial Census and the Rural Development Ministry's Socio Economic and Caste Census.The current data vacuum is in contrast to 2011-2, when there was a surfeit of information from the decennial Census and the Rural Development Ministry's Socio Economic and Caste Census.

The Narendra Modi government is set to launch a new household consumer expenditure survey (CES) from July. The exercise is welcome — in fact, long overdue. The CES, covering some 1.2 lakh rural and 84,000 urban households, is supposed to be conducted every five years. The last two such nationwide sample surveys were carried out in 2011-12 and 2017-18. Unfortunately, the results of the 2017-18 survey were not released on grounds of unexplained “data quality issues”. Effectively, it means there is no official data after 2011-12 for estimating poverty lines and ratios, based on consumption spending below a certain level and the percentage of households falling within that deprivation threshold. Many would rightly argue that high growth rates and government welfare programmes have little meaning, especially in a country like India, if these do not result in reducing poverty. Without data, it’s difficult to gauge whether this is happening at all, leave alone at an accelerated pace.

The current data vacuum is in contrast to 2011-2, when there was a surfeit of information from the decennial Census and the Rural Development Ministry’s Socio Economic and Caste Census. The latter data was, in fact, key to the identification of beneficiaries under the Modi government’s own successful schemes — be it rural housing and toilets or providing free LPG and electricity connections. Data-driven policy-making is vital to other areas as well: For instance, is consumption of foods rich in proteins (milk, pulses, eggs and meat) and micro-nutrients (fruits and vegetables) growing at the same rate as in the previous decade? Only the CES can give satisfactory answers to this question, which also matters for making future demand projections, crop planning and dietary diversification interventions. With Covid’s shadow falling behind, the next one-and-a-half years or so should hopefully yield a wealth of information from both the CES and the Census to guide policymakers and researchers, currently reliant on private data providers such as the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and NielsenIQ.

While the CES’s launch is timely, the government should move to doing surveys on a more regular basis. The existing quinquennial framework and waiting for “normal” years makes no sense. Such years have become increasingly rare in India, where the recent period has seen disruptions owing to demonetisation, GST, Covid and the Ukraine war-induced commodity price shock. Since government decision-making has to be dynamic and responsive to changing ground situations, the data has to keep flowing. If a CMIE can survey over 2,36,000 households thrice every year, there is no reason why the National Statistical Office cannot do a CES, which is based on a more comprehensive questionnaire, at least annually, even with a smaller sample size.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on June 25, 2022 under the title ‘Let there be data’.

First uploaded on: 25-06-2022 at 04:15 IST
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