Change Of Guard

The Chief Economic Advisor, who is really the advisor to the Finance Ministry, is in the public eye because he oversees the Economic Survey and provides technical support to the finance ministry’s economic utterances. His counterpart in the ministry of statistics, the chief statistician, is hardly ever visible because the figures he is in charge of get buried in the tables of economic reports. Till recently, the government followed the practice of choosing chief statisticians out of the Indian Statistical Service, which is not the most distinguished of services. That made the chief statistician even less conspicuous. But then it chose a chief statistician out of the ordinary, Pronab Sen. He not only knew his statistics, but could express them in comprehensible English. So he had the promise of fame in him. Unfortunately, almost before he could open his mouth, he is gone. He is replaced by a scion of the family that has perhaps provided India with the largest number of senior civil servants, known simply by its initials, T.C.A. Anant had the sense of asking for a contract rather than rely on the foibles of the rulers. So unless he throws up his hands and decides to leave, he will be in office for five years, and will have the time to make some improvements.

Whereas his predecessors were plagued by the problem of too many indifferent statisticians, Anant will face the opposite problem. The Indian Statistical Service is 40 years old. It recruited prolifically in its initial years; all those bright hopes of the last century are about to fade away. So Anant will have to find people to replace them. And the way the government works, employees leave when they are 60 and are replaced by young people in their 20s. This could lead to a recurrence of what happened in the 1960s; the government may end up taking a large number of mediocre statisticians, and be burdened with them till 2050. That would be just business as usual; official statistics would continue to be profuse and second-rate. But it is something Anant will want to prevent.

He will have a difficult task. If the government got poor statisticians half a century ago, that was because of a small pool and poor training. Today, the pool of trained young people is larger. But they have far more choice of jobs and specialisations. So the government faces greater competition in the job market; to get good statisticians in this market will be tough. Further, statistics is not amongst the most popular professions. The number of statistics faculties remains small, as does their outturn of graduates. Anant would do well to try and attract good economists and mathematicians into the service.

Whether he can attract them will depend on what prospects they see in the government. The prospects cannot be great. But Anant could improve them by loaning out statisticians to large public and private enterprises. The age-old model in which the government requires companies to send it periodic statistical returns, adds together the figures and publishes them has worked poorly. Since it is unwilling to punish enterprises simply for not sending in a few figures in time, it gets only a small proportion of the figures it asks for; so its statistics are imperfect, incomplete and delayed. A better way would be to embed statisticians in the major regulators and public and private enterprises —  in other words, for them to outsource their statistical requirements to a professional organisation. Anant should offer to run their statistical departments for them.

The model is not without its difficulties. Many of the organisations will have their own statistical departments. Anant should be prepared to take them over, or at least to have exchange arrangements with them. The relative salaries will differ; and since salaries outside the government tend to be higher, many outsourced statisticians will not want to come back. Anant should be prepared to accept such attrition. There will be much parochialism in the organisations; he will have to persuade them to accept national standards, and obtain their cooperation in working out the standards.

To put it briefly, the era of a dedicated statistical service of the central government is past; there are many other sources of statistics, and many other employers. If India is to have first-class statistics, all these institutions have to be brought together. That would be a more difficult job than just heading the statistical service; but if Anant succeeds in it, he will leave a far more solid achievement behind him. A dyed-in-the-wool government babu would never dream of attempting it. But Anant can — and should.