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Observe June 29 as National Statistical Day: Manmohan

Special Correspondent

Platinum Jubilee fete of Indian Statistical Institute

KOLKATA: June 29 will be henceforth observed as "National Statistical Day" across the country, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced here on Sunday.

The day marks the birth anniversary of Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the doyen of Indian statistics and founder of the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata.

Inaugurating the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of the institute, where he was conferred an Honorary D.Sc. degree, Dr. Singh said that declaring the day as the "National Statistical Day" was to commemorate the memory of the great institution.

His announcement came following a request from External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also the Chairman of the institute's Council.

Accuracy of data

The Prime Minister said that ``with liberalisation ushering in significant changes in the economy [that need] to be captured by the statistical system there are growing concerns about the reliability, timelessness and accuracy of our statistical data." It was imperative that these concerns were addressed.

"Frequent revisions of important data series have added to the erosion of credibility... apart from questions about the quality of data, there are problems such as data gaps, duplication leading to conflicting statistics and inordinate delays in transmission and publication of data", Dr. Singh observed, after laying the foundation stone of the institute's Platinum Jubilee Academic building.

While referring to the perennial problem of deterioration in the quality of data on crops, the Prime Minister said, "as a policy maker, I am faced with conflicting data on crop estimates of important products such as wheat and sugarcane".

On the industrial front the Index of Industrial Production failed to fully capture the vibrant small-scale and informal sector, he said. "Services now account for 60 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. Yet services too are not fully captured in our national income statistics," Dr. Singh regretted. There was an urgent need for the computation of a separate price index for services.

The institute's involvement in the planning process and for strengthening the statistical system of the country has, in recent years, "been on the wane", he said. The institute must participate and play a major role in upgrading the quality of data, generated by various Ministries of the Government of India and by the State Governments.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that the West Bengal Government had assigned the institute the task of conducting a social-economic survey of the condition of Muslim minorities in the State and that of determining the actual number of unemployed in the State.

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