All India Workshop of Trainers for 79th Round of NSS

National Statistical System Training Academy (NSSTA), Greater Noida

The National Statistical Office (NSO) (erstwhile NSSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India is organising an All India Workshop of Trainers (AIWOT) for the NSS 79^th Round of its Socio-Economic Survey at National Statistical System Training Academy (NSSTA), Greater Noida during 8^th to 10^th March 2022. The subjects under coverage in this Round are the Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey (CAMS) and AYUSH Survey. The NSO and the State Directorates of Economics & Statistics will carry out the 79^th Round survey programme jointly for a period of one year.

2. Prof. Bimal Kumar Roy, Chairman, National Statistical Commission (NSC), MoSPI, GoI inaugurated the workshop on 8^th March, 2022, at 11.00 AM. Shri Pravin Srivastava, Chairman, Working Group of NSS 79^th Round, Ex. CSI & Secretary (S&PI) also addressed the participants on the occasion. Dr. G P Samantha, CSI cum Secretary(S&PI), GoI gave inaugural address before the participants. Other dignitaries include Dr. Kiran Pandya, Member, NSC; Shri S.L. Menaria, Director General (NSS). Apart from this, more than 100 officials from several States/UTs also graced the occasion. The Objective of the Survey is as below:-

• The Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey (CAMS) schedule (CAMS, 2021) is designed to collect information required to generate some important socio-economic indicators, demands for which has increased significantly during past few years. The importance for having globally comparable indices measuring and monitoring the performance of the country in various socio-economic dimensions has also been emphasized at different forum.
  
• The Survey on AYUSH of NSS 79^thround is going to be the first survey of its kind. The main objective of this survey is to get an idea about the awareness and penetration of AYUSH systems of medicine in Indian population. An attempt was made in the survey of Household Consumer Expenditure, NSS 68th round, 2011-12 to get some estimates on awareness and uses of AYUSH system of medicine by the household. Information on AYUSH medicines used by the patients for in-patient and out-patient treatments and by the pregnant women for pre-natal & post-natal care was collected in the survey of Household Social Consumption: Health, NSS 75th round, 2017-18. But, no dedicated and comprehensive nation-wide survey on AYUSH sector has been conducted in any NSS household surveys till date.

3. The survey will cover the whole of the Indian Union except the villages in Andaman and Nicobar Islands which are difficult to access.

4. Shri S L Menaria, Director |General (NSS) in his address welcomed the esteemed dignitaries on the dias and Members of the NSC as well as Working Group attending the meeting virtually. He also welcomed all the participants from various divisions of NSO as well as those attending the meeting virtually including participants from State Governments. He said that we have assembled here to discuss the concepts and definitions of the ensuing 79th Round of NSS proposed to be launched shortly which will cover the important subjects of ‘Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey (CAMS) and survey on AYUSH’.

CAMS will cater for the emerging need for information on high-frequency socio-economic indicators that are not available from any other source like administrative data etc. as well as provide the information required for the purpose of monitoring the performances of SDG indicators. The survey on AYUSH will be the first-ever all-India survey on AYUSH and will gather information for the development of various key parameters on AYUSH.

5. Dr G.P. Samantha, CSI & Secretary (S&PI) greeted all the dignitaries at the dias and thanked the participants in the hall as well as those joining virtually. He said that it has been a long journey for the NSO since its inception in 1950 to the 79th round of NSS scheduled to take place from 1st July 2022. Great Statisticians like Prof. P. C. Mahalanobis, Prof C. R. Rao and Prof. P. V. Sukhatme to name a few, played a pivotal role in shaping the NSO to its present level. He said that Statistics is a powerful technology and to have good results utmost care should be taken in the collection of data and post data collection work. He also hoped that with the use of CAPI in data collection, results can be published timely. He also stressed the need of planning properly for eventualities.

6. Shri Pravin Srivastava, Ex-Secretary (S&PI) cum Chairman, Working Group of NSS 79^th Round reiterated that the success of any survey of this kind largely depends upon the techniques used by the field officials and the resultant cooperation from the respondents. All India Training of Trainers officers from Centre and States will deliberate to bring uniformity in concepts and procedures before the commencement of actual fieldwork. He categorically explained before the audience that Working Group is trying to adopt uniformity of formats for various surveys. He also stressed the importance of timeliness of publishing Survey results.

7. While addressing Prof. Bimal Kumar Roy Chairman (National Statistical Commission) said that it is the endeavour of the Ministry of Statistics and NSO to generate statistics that are reliable, accurate, timely and cost-effective for making policies for the overall improvement in the developmental activities. Data would be collected from around 3 lakh households in 12,000 villages/urban blocks in the central sample and almost an equal number in the state sample. The Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey (CAMS) schedule (CAMS, 2021) is designed to collect information required to generate some important socio-economic indicators, demands for which has been increased significantly during the past few years.

The Survey on AYUSH of NSS 79thround is going to be the first survey of its kind. The main objective of this survey is to get an idea about the awareness and penetration of AYUSH systems of medicine in the Indian population. He also stressed the need of shortening the length of the questionnaire, so that the data collector can get correct feedback from the household, he also advised SDRD to work on the possibility of splitting the questionnaire across households. He ended the address by greeting everyone for International Women’s Day.

8. Vote of thanks was given by Dr Bivas Chaudhuri, Addl. DG, FoD, NSO. In this conference, senior officials from various deptt/ministries of Govt of India also participated and would be taking part in this 3 days deliberations.

Disclaimer : This is an official press release by PIB.