NSC resignations: Former comission chairman says data no longer insulated from government influence

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 30

Notwithstanding the government’s assertion that the members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC) who resigned recently had never expressed their concerns during any of the meetings, former chairman Pronab Sen said the latest developments defeated the very purpose of constituting such a panel as “it was created to insulate data from government influence”.

Talking to The Tribune Sen Said: “Historically the commission was formed with the intent of preventing conflict between statistician and the government and the function of preparing the National Account was assigned to the panel”. He then went on to add: “NITI Aayog bypassed the commission and on its own created the back series for computing GDP figure”.
This led to resentment among the members of the panel.

“Even in case of employment survey the governing body is the commission. The survey was done and the report on data was ready. Initially, the government had agreed to release it on December 5, but now it has developed cold feet,” Sen said, adding that as the data was to come “quarterly” and “yearly”, the employment survey captured the figures from July 2017 to June 2018, but now “government wants to wait for December data.

Former finance minister P Chidambram also in a series of Twitter posts said: “One more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government.”

 “We mourn the death of the National Statistical Commission and remember with gratitude its valiant fight to release untainted GDP data and employment data. May the NSC rest in peace until it is re-born again.”

Meanwhile, the government issued a statement in the wake of two independent members of the NSC, PC Mohanan and JV Meenakshi, quitting the Commission over disagreements with the government on the back-series GDP data and delay in release of labour force survey. Mohanan was also the acting chairperson of the commission.

Mohanan is reported to have said, “I have resigned from NSC. We thought that the commission is not very effective nowadays and we also thought that we are not able to discharge the commission’s responsibility.”

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) in the statement clarified: “These concerns were not expressed by the members in any of the meetings of the commission in the last few months.” But it went on to add that the government values the advice of NSC and takes appropriate action.

Referring to the issues concerning labour force survey, which is conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) under MoSPI, it said, “NSSO is processing the quarterly data for the period July 2017 to December 2018 and the report will be released thereafter.”

As regards the back series data of the GDP, the statement said that NSC had itself advised the ministry to finalise and release it. But the back series GDP data generated controversy after it was revealed that the growth rate during Congress-led UPA government was not as high as it was estimated earlier.