Even because the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) presses forward with the usage of different sources of information in India’s official statistics, the NITI Aayog has requested if the ministry ought to even be partaking with such information units.
Talking on Thursday initially of a two-day workshop on ‘Utilizing Alternate Information Sources and Frontier Applied sciences for Coverage Making’, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Suman Bery questioned if these new areas must be a precedence for MoSPI and cautioned that they need to “not grow to be an all-consuming process or preoccupation”, though he added that utilizing new information sources and applied sciences is “very highly effective” because it helps give a way in regards to the path through which the financial system is headed in a fast-moving world for real-time interventions.
“I might additionally make the purpose that to some extent the difficulty of whether or not all of this must be occurring in MoSPI and within the statistical infrastructure or whether or not it must be occurring in our wealthy community of assume tanks is, I feel, an acceptable concern. For instance, NCAER… has a centre for information analytics,” Bery stated.
New Delhi-based think-tank Nationwide Council of Utilized Financial Analysis (NCAER) arrange a Nationwide Information Innovation Centre in 2017 to function a “laboratory for experiments in information assortment”, amongst different aims.
OTT, others in CPI
In the meantime, talking on the similar workshop, MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg stated alternate information sources and frontier know-how have “reached a stage that we will truly use it for official statistics” and that this augured effectively for the way forward for information evaluation. In an interview to The Indian Categorical, printed on Thursday, Garg had stated the Statistics Ministry is trying to make use of information from sources similar to on-line reserving platforms for air and rail fares and over-the-top (OTT) streaming companies, amongst others, for the brand new Shopper Worth Index (CPI) sequence that will likely be launched in early 2026.
“For the brand new CPI sequence, MoSPI is increasing its strategy by exploring different information sources, similar to on-line platforms for airfare, rail fare, OTT platforms and administrative data for value information of petrol, diesel and LPG. Discussions are ongoing with IRCTC, beneath the Ministry of Railways, and the PPAC beneath the Ministry of Petroleum and Pure Fuel for direct switch of information for integration in CPI,” Garg stated.
MoSPI is within the strategy of revising its key macroeconomic indicators — CPI, the Index of Industrial Manufacturing (IIP), and Gross Home Product (GDP). Other than updating the bottom years to 2022-23 for GDP and IIP, and 2024 for CPI, the revision train can even see adjustments in methodology used to compute the indications. As well as, the up to date CPI sequence will likely be based mostly on a brand new basket of products and companies as per the findings of MoSPI’s current Family Consumption Expenditure Survey. This might end in near-obsolete gadgets similar to audio casettes being faraway from the CPI basket, with costs of extra up to date items like treadmills getting used within the measurement of retail inflation.
‘Clever integration’
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Chief Financial Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran, additionally talking on the workshop, pushed for the usage of different information in official statistics. Whereas surveys, administrative, and nationwide accounts information stay indispensable as inputs in making choices, the tempo, complexity, and granularity required by fashionable policymaking and the challenges hooked up to them “have uncovered limitations in each the periodicity and dimensionality of such information,” he stated.
In keeping with Nageswaran, different information similar to satellite-based night-time luminosity — used as a proxy for financial exercise in areas with delayed or weak statistical reporting — and different satellite tv for pc information might help policymakers monitor industrial exercise, highway connectivity, and cropping patterns, amongst others. “These insights can inform well timed choices on enter provisioning, crop insurance coverage payouts, and regional procurement methods,” he stated. These new varieties of information seize emergent behaviour, reply sooner to shocks, and replicate the “lived expertise of financial brokers in ways in which standard aggregates generally can’t,” he added.
Nonetheless, the federal government’s high economist warned that whereas different information might help policymakers transfer from “retrospective diagnostics to proactive intervention”, they may not substitute official statistics and warranted “clever integration”.
“Due to this fact, the mature strategy will not be to decide on between official and different information however to design methods the place every informs and validates the opposite, particularly in environments the place well timed motion is essential,” Nageswaran stated, including that enthusiasm should be tempered with prudence as official information nonetheless carried a “sure larger sense of authenticity and reliability and accuracy given the years of utilization and in-built checks and balances”.
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As regards to frontier applied sciences similar to synthetic intelligence, Nageswaran stated the “black field nature of sure algorithms, the potential for bias embedded in coaching information, and dangers to particular person privateness should be actively mitigated by means of sturdy governance frameworks”. Additional, these applied sciences must be deployed in a method that they’re tailor-made to institutional absorption capability. “A well-designed algorithm is simply as efficient because the human methods deciphering and performing upon its output,” the chief financial adviser stated.