NSSO to conduct fresh survey in 2011-12

NEW DELHI: The government could wait for two more years to factor in the country's latest poverty and unemployment rates into its policy-making. The socio-economic status of the nation’s 1.2 billion citizens is gauged by national sample surveys on consumer expenditure and employment. The findings of the latest survey, conducted in 2009-10, would be released this April. “It (2009-10 ) was an abnormal year with the global slowdown hitting urban areas and the drought affecting rural India, so all the results have gone haywire,” a senior government official told ET. “They won’t represent actual poverty and unemployment status due to the unusual circumstances and would have limited utility in policy making,” he said.

With a view that the results from a bad year for the economy are not comparable with past data, the National Sample Survey Organisation ( NSSO) has been told to do the entire exercise all over again — with unprecedented oneoff surveys on employment and consumer expenditure in 2011-12. “The 2011-12 surveys are a one-off exercise and would enable quick comparison to examine the impact of the recession on India and its aftermath,” India’s chief statistician TCA Anant told ET. Conducted every five years, the last official survey on consumer expenditure and employment was done by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in 2004-05. At the time, India’s unemployment rate was pegged at 2.8% and a poverty rate of about 27% was estimated.

The unemployment rate for India’s 424 million-strong workforce had reached 9.4% in 2009-10 , according to the first-ever household-level national employment survey conducted by the Labour Bureau. The bureau’s study, however, had a smaller sample size than the NSSO. “Policy isn’t a mechanical translation of data,” Anant stressed. “It is up to the Planning Commission to decide to what extent it uses the poverty level suggested by the 2009-10 data to benchmark poverty-alleviation schemes’ targeting, for instance,” he said.