By Bhupen Goswami

Guwahati : D V Sadananda Gowda, Union Minister for Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) today said that the data collected during National Sample Survey will help realise the goal of Government of India to double farmers’ income by 2022. He was inaugurating the three-day All India Workshop of Trainers (AIWOT) organised by National Sample Survey at Guwahati today. The workshop is held for the 77th Round Survey Programme which will be carried out by NSSO and State Directorates of Economics & Statistics jointly for a period of one year starting from 1st January, 2019. The minister also informed that NSSO is going to conduct a Time Use Survey, first in the country, from 1st January 2019. The primary objective of Time Use Survey is to measure participation of men, women and other groups of persons in paid and unpaid activities. The survey will be an important source of information on the time spent in unpaid care-giving activities, unpaid volunteer work and unpaid domestic service producing activities of the household members. Reiterating the commitment of the government towards doubling farmers’ income, the Minister said that in the forthcoming Round of NSS, data will be collected on ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households, Land and Livestock holdings of Households and Debt & Investment’. Data collected on different aspects of agricultural households during this Round will be of immense help in understanding the economic well-being of the households engaged in agricultural activities and taking further measures towards their welfare, he added. He said that the survey on land and livestock holdings will help generate different indicators of ownership and operational holdings of rural households, including their ownership of livestock and that it will be particularly useful in development of the credit structure in the country. The Minister informed the gathering that NSSO will be launching two new annual surveys from the coming year – the Annual Survey of Services Sector Enterprises and the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises. He added, “These two surveys will provide important estimates for use in computing the National Accounts relating to the services sector and the informal sector. Another major contribution of the two surveys will be that they will help in improving the availability of the employment data in the country”. Lauding the efforts of the MoSPI, the Minister said that it has been the endeavour of his ministry to maintain high statistical standards and to re-orient the processes and priorities in the realm of official statistics in tune with the changing economic and technological environment. Keeping in tune with the Digital India campaign, NSSO has fully digitized all its future surveys, he added. Acknowledging the importance of the need for effective training for field staff in data collection and compilations, the minister said that these workshops are the first and most important activity in the processes involved in the surveys of NSSO. Extending his best wished for workshop and the subsequent surveys, the minister said that the discussions on concepts, definitions and survey instruments during these workshops will help the participants in further consolidating the understanding of this survey. During the workshop detailed training on the survey instruments will be imparted to the senior field officers during these three days for effective implementation of the guidelines for canvassing of schedules in the field. The participants of the All India Workshop of Trainers, in turn, will impart training to the field functionaries at the Regional Training Camps to be held in their respective offices all over the country before the surveys are launched on 1st January, 2019. The surveys will cover the whole of the Indian Union except the villages in Andaman and Nicobar Islands which are difficult to access. The inaugural session was also attended by Shri D P Mondal, Director General, National Sample Survey Office and senior officials of the Central and State Government.