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India begins Economic Census 2005
By agencies
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Thursday, 19 May 2005, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: India has begun a countrywide census covering 211 million households and 40 million enterprises to procure data on all forms of employment and economic activity in the country.
The Economic Census 2005 will cover all activities of business excluding crop production and plantations, to help the planners in drawing up appropriate policies devoted to employment and development.
"The process of data collection has already begun and we propose to complete the field work by August this year," said SK Nath, additional director general at the Central Statistical Organization.
"Since we are using intelligent character recognition technology for the first time, we will finish the process of scanning the collected data by another six to eight months and bring out the report by June 2006," Nath said.
This is the fifth such exercise since it was started in late 70s and will cost $22.7 million.
Field officers have begun visiting households and enterprises in about 20 states. The census is almost over in Sikkim and Madhya Pradesh.
"The basic purpose of the data collection is for it to help the central and state governments to use the information for drawing up development programs and also to give a fix on employment status," Nath said adding "The data collected by us will help people know about the nation's enterprises in terms of activities, number of males, women and children employed, the scale of operation, the source of funding and the type of building structures."
Even the Central Statistical Organization will bring out an activity-based directory of Indian enterprises, which will run into several volumes.