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            [short_description] => This comes in the midst of declining trust in official statistics\n\n
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What is the issue? 
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Over the years, the demand for statistics has increased multi-fold, while the process of data collection and analysis has become very complex. 
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Recently, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) proposed the development of a new “National Policy on Official Statistics”.
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This is significant as it comes in the midst of declining trust of the masses in official statistics due to the proliferation of post-truths (fake news).
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What are the proposed institutional reforms in statistics? 
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As trust in official statistics is vital for democracy, public trust needs to be won through competent and honest institutional mechanisms.
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In this context, the proposed policy envisions addressing statistical aspects like complexity, ethics, quality, documentation and data retention.  
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“Sample surveys” forms the bedrock of Indian statistical system and the instructions for surveying are dealt in a detailed and explicit manner.
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Specialisation - Increasing need for statistics in diverse areas is pressuring our statisticians to seek assistance of scholars from multiple disciplines.
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Notably, National Sample Survey (NSS) switched over to a new set of codes in 2009 for data collection involving industrial labourers.
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These change made it difficult to differentiate between farmers and farm managers and shopkeepers and sales managers via occupational codes alone.
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This resulted in the exclusion of a large chunk of the Indian workforce in the unorganised sector from our statistical analysis.
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The problem arose mainly due to our statisticians merely aping models followed in industrialised societies, without contextualising it for India.
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This fumble could’ve easily been avoided had there been a sociologist with knowledge on ‘occupational studies’ on board. 
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Reliability - How surveys are designed and questions are developed has evolved into a science that in itself needs specialists.
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Notably, RBI has adopted an inflation-targeting approach that relies on data on inflation expectations of individuals (which is highly unreliable).
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Such an absurd approach to data is what is driving our policy, which calls for a serious rethink on our data collection modules. 
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Honesty - Data collection is increasingly being done by contractors and for-profit organisations, which has raised honesty related concerns.
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Supervising them and ensuring their honesty remains challenging despite the commissioning of some technology based monitoring mythologies.
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This aspect has reiterated the fact that there is no substitute for empathy and personal truthfulness, which needs to be culturally ingrained in organisations.
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Decentralisation - Currently, statistical systems are largely centralised at the ministerial levels in the central and state governments.
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Instead of this, creating a data ecosystem that harnesses the energy of diverse institutions innovatively should be considered.
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Statistics needs to get internalised into the fabric of our institutions even at the lowest level and the higher-ups should merely collate the data points. 
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Source: The Hindu
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