-Frontline.in Interview with R.B. Barman, former Chairperson, National Statistical Commission. R.B. Barman, former Chairperson of the National Statistical Commission (NSC), was member of the Indian Statistical Service before joining the Reserve Bank of India in 1979. He was president of the Indian Econometric Society in 2006-07, Vice Chairman, Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics, Bank for International Settlement, Basel, Switzerland, and Member, International Data Forum. He sent a paper to Prime...

-The Hindu India has no industrial policy or employment strategy to ride the wave of its demographic dividend Job creation has slowed since 2011-12, the year of the last published National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) labour force survey. I used Labour Bureau annual survey (2015-16) data and Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. (CMIE) data (post-2016), which has a sample size larger than the NSSO labour force surveys, to reach this...

-The Hindu There needs to be robust infrastructure for official statistics so that governments do not suppress inconvenient truths Over the past two weeks, headlines have focussed on declining employment between 2011-12 and 2016-17; loss of jobs under the National Democratic Alliance government, particularly post-demonetisation; and the government’s refusal to release a report using the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) documenting this decline, leading to resignations of two members of the National...

-The Indian Express My resignation from National Statistical Commission was the last act in a long story of disregard for its reports William Setzer, in the working paper, “Politics and Statistics: Independence, Dependence or Interaction”, published by the UN, lists several possible areas where political interference in official data generation and publication can happen. One of these is the extent and timing of release of data. He cites several examples. Most...

-TheWire.in Manufacturing jobs actually fell in absolute terms from 58.9 million in 2011-12 to 48.3 million in 2015-16. Economists have been writing for some months that, contrary to the claims of the government, there is plenty of data available that shows unmistakably that unemployment is high and rising. Educated unemployment has worsened just as young people are getting better educated, and expect to work outside agriculture in industry and services. We have done this...