Antiquated data collection system needs revamp
Provisional results from a study the United Nations Children's Fund, in association with state agencies, has conducted, show that 45.1 per cent of the children in the country in 2005-2006 were malnourished. From this infamously sub-Saharan levels, the situation has dramatically improved — to a historic low of 30.7 per cent last year. But the country is not quite ready to celebrate, because there is no official Government data to back up the Unicef study. The last time the Government did a State-level study on nutritional levels was 10 years ago. For district level data, which is crucial to understanding regional disparities within States and design targeted programmes, one has to go back to 2002-2003. A National Family Health Survey is currently underway, but even preliminary State-level data from the study is not expected until the end of this year; district-level data won't be published before the middle of 2016. Until then, the Government will not have the statistical input it needs to plan the next generation of welfare schemes related to nutrition, child development and healthcare. This isn’t a one-off case. Missing data, faulty data, irrelevant data or just bad data, are all problems that have plagued India across sectors, over time and irrespective of the party in power over the decades. This has crippled effective policymaking, led to a colossal wastage of resources and caused irreparable damage to the country’s development processes.
For example, a Government of India document evaluating Chhattisgarh's mid-day meal scheme found that there were wide discrepancies in the numbers captured by its management information system and those reported in its annual work plan. Earlier this year, India's gross domestic product growth for 2013-2014 was revised from five per cent to 6.9 per cent. Minor revisions to macro-economic data are nothing new. However, an almost two percentage point increase is akin to re-writing the nation's economic history for that year, bringing its fundamental economic indicators under a cloud. Another example is the discourse on air pollution. From studies conducted by private agencies, we know that some Indian cities are amongst the most polluted in the world, and yet there is almost no official data on this matter. Whatever little exists is either dated or measured with faulty machines.
India's data problem is usually not for a lack of effort or resource. Every year, the Government spends crores of rupees on different studies and surveys. Except for when it simply doesn't care to commission a survey, in most cases the data is zealously gathered, tabulated, verified and presented in hardbound folders. However, the final product is shoddy for a variety of reasons. The methodology is bad, there's no one to ensure compliance, the data is not disseminated in a relevant format, and, sometimes, the figures collected are too old to be of any use to policymakers anymore.