Stats ministry working on reforms to make data and surveys more robust, says Saurabh Garg

Saurabh Garg stressed on the importance of surveys in determining policies.

The ministry of statistics and programme implementation is working on reforms to make the survey collection process more robust, Saurabh Garg, secretary to the ministry, said at a brainstorming session organised in Delhi on September 20.

“We are undertaking a number of reforms to ensure that there is no fatigue in surveys, by breaking it in one or two sessions, using technology and improving representativeness,” he said.

The household consumption expenditure survey conducted by the ministry recently was divided into several parts to obtain more useful responses so that vital issues are not lost in the process of answering a lengthy questionnaire.

Garg highlighted that the ministry was cognizant about the concerns surrounding data privacy. “People have apprehensions about data anonymisation. The ministry has been doing this for last 70 years and we are always cognizant of this.”

The secretary also said that the ministry was aware of issues surrounding impersonation and was working around them.

Garg underlined the importance of such surveys in determining policy by giving the example of HCES, which is instrumental in determining inflation. The data is used by the Reserve Bank of India to work out the monetary policy.

The ministry is organising a session on the issue of non-response in surveys by high income groups and gated societies for better representativeness. “We need to introspect why we have a lack of participation from the group which is most vocal on social media,” said Shiv Das Meena, chairman of Tamil Nadu RERA, in his special address.

Meena pointed out that this section of the society also have low voting percentage and it is important to understand the reason for this lack of participation.