P.C. Mohanan, the Chairman of the Kerala State Statistical Commission and former acting Chairperson of the National Statistical Commission, on Thursday expressed serious concern over the delay in the conduct of the decadal population census.
Participating in a panel discussion organised by the Madras Institute of Development Studies here, he said many policies were being introduced without the backing of adequate data. For instance, he said there was no data on the size of the migrant population in different States, which is required for the implementation of the ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ scheme.
He said it is believed that around 30 lakh migrants from the northern States were working in Kerala, but there was no authentic data. He added that, without proper data, it was difficult to arrive at the requirement and demand for additional allocations of food grains from the Union government.
Pointing to concerns raised over the surveys by the National Sample Survey Organisation and the National Family Health Survey, especially by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), he said the results of these surveys were not closer to the claims made by the Union government regarding the implementation of certain schemes.
He said, for instance, while the Union government says toilet coverage was closer to 100% through the Swachh Bharat Mission, these surveys place the figure at only around 75%, although they record substantial improvement in the coverage.
Aloke Kar, Visiting Scientist, Sampling, and Official Statistics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, highlighted the impact of the delay in the census by pointing out that the population census provided the backbone of the entire statistical system in the country.
In the recent paper published by members of EAC-PM, raising concerns over the data quality of the National Sample Survey (NSS), he said they had followed a concept articulated by statistician Xiao-Li Meng. However, he said that Meng’s approach is inapplicable to NSS because of the way the sampling was done in the survey.
Brinda Viswanathan, professor, Madras School of Economics, refuted certain criticisms against the data on stunting in children by arguing that the benchmarks on children’s growth were well-tested and well-understood across the world. A. Kalaiyarasan, Assistant Professor, MIDS, moderated the discussion.
